Until I find You Rea Frey (Review by Julia Bryan)

4.6 out of 5
 
Being a mother isn’t easy. It’s even harder when the child is less than a year – and harder still when you are blind and have no spouse or parent to help you. That is where we find Bec. She is deftly navigating life after the tragic death of her husband, the birth of her first child and her mother’s passing. All alone in her mother’s old house, Bec isn’t looking for sympathy and resists asking for help – she’s determined to be the best mother she can, blindness or not.

But when strange things start to happen – finding her front door unlocked, a knife in the fridge and mistakenly thinking her son has fallen into a pool – Bec and her new ‘mom friends’ start to think it’s all been too much for Bec’s sanity. Then Bec wakes to discover that her son has been taken and another baby has been left in his place. This mother’s nightmare grows as everyone around her thinks Bec has truly lost it and they don’t believe that there has been a swap.

Bec’s friend Crystal seems to be the only one supporting her. Crystal and Bec had met at a bereavement group and bonded over the sudden deaths of their husbands. With the help of Bec’s old flame and his connections as a police detective, the three friends try to find Bec’s son. But while they try to be supportive, it soon seems that even her friends don’t believe Bec’s story and are worried about her.

“Until I Find You” by Rea Frey is one of those books you can’t put down and hate when it’s over. Told in the voices of both Bec and Crystal, you are easily drawn into the struggle of widowed mothers, and further, you begin to imagine how you would cope with both of these roles while you were also blind. Rea Frey has completely captured the intense emotions of motherhood and the overwhelming protective instincts that come with it. A great read!