Overall, I'd call this an edge-of-seat read; it's hard to resist the horror of going blind all by itself. Throw in a switcheroo of your infant son with a different one, and, well, yikes. Rebecca Gray is a recent widow, trying to care for a three-month-old baby her late husband never got to meet. If that weren't enough, she has a degenerative eye disease that's quickly moving toward total blindness. She gets around - far better than I'd have expected of anyone given the circumstances - with help from her near-photographic memory and the requisite white cane. Always, she keeps her son Jackson near, with bells tied to his tiny legs to alert her to his presence. She's also plagued with the feeling that she's being watched or followed and that someone may have been in her house.
Bec, a former professional cellist, has a few close friends with whom she socializes; one of them has a 10-year-old daughter, a musical prodigy Bec has taken on as a student. One day, Bec nearly collapses - and agrees to one of her friends' suggestions that she take sleeping pills and get some rest while the friend hangs around in case the baby wakes up. Bec gets a much-needed rest, all right, but the walls come crashing down when she goes to the crib to get Jackson and finds a baby there that isn't him.
She panics, understandably, and becomes even more agitated when her friends - even the one who stayed with her and Jackson - that the baby is the same one she's always had. Immediately, she concludes no one else will believe her - especially not the police - so instead of seeking professional help, she turns to the ex-boyfriend she loved with all her heart but who left her to take a job in another part of the country. He's found a new job here now, it seems, and they recently reconnected. Jake's actually a homicide detective, but he frustrates Bec because he emphasizes that while he'll do what he can to help, he has to follow established department rules.
With barely a little help from her friends, then, Bec pretty much sets out to investigate on her own - along the way bumping into walls both real and imagined. Finally, there's a breakthrough - and Bec realizes the truth doesn't live far from home.
Admittedly, I wasn't able to sympathize with Bec as much as I would have expected given her predicament. But fairly early on, she lost me when she refused to even consult the experts - rationalizing that they "won't believe me." Trust me, if somebody gave me the wrong baby, you'd have to pry me out of every police station and social worker's office in the state with a crowbar. When I got to the end, I also realized that Bec's concerns about being followed and the home invasions hadn't been addressed. So were her suspicions accurate or merely figments of an overactive imagination?
Still, the book was hard to put down, especially as Bec gets closer to finding her baby (or at least finding out what happened to him). All told, it's an engaging, fast-paced tale. Thanks to the publisher, via Netgalley, for allowing me to read and review a pre-release copy.
Until I Find You by Rea Frey (St. Martin's Griffin, August 2020); 320 pp.
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