Until You're Mine, by Samantha Hayes

In this psychological thriller, someone is killing pregnant women, cutting the fetuses out of them and leaving them to bleed to death. The reader hears from three point-of-views. Claudia Morgan-Brown is the step-mother of two twin boys, soon-to-be mother of a baby girl, and working as a social-worker until the last possible moment. Her husband, James, is in the military and is about to be deployed. To help her with caring for the children and the house, the two have hired a nanny, Zoe. However, something about Zoe seems off to Claudia and, given that Claudia's husband's away and she has no adult but Zoe in the house, Claudia is beginning to worry about whether or not the new nanny can be trusted.. The more we hear from Zoe, the more it seems that Claudia might be right to worry. It becomes clear to the reader that her name is not Zoe and that her purposes for taking the job as a nanny are neither monetary or altruistic. The third point-of-view is that of the police officer in charge of the case, Lorraine. Her husband and her are going through a rough patch (brought on by his infidelity) and trying to hide it from their daughters. On top of that, she needs to hunt down the person who is slaughtering  pregnant women before that person kills again.
<P>The book is well-written. The author and editor have good spelling and grammar skills and there aren't any sentences that are phrased awkwardly. The book is suspenseful and it would take a genius to guess how things turn out. Although there are subtle clues to the killer's identity and why certain characters do what they do, they are very subtle and the reader is genuinely surprised by the way things unfold. The only thing I'd say could be improved is the connections between the different characters. It seems as if every single main character is connected in some way. While, for a story to work, there needs to be some connections, I feel that there are some ones that are needless in the case of this book. For instance, Lorraine's husband's one-night stand just happens to be with one of the view-point characters, whose sister just happens to have had an affair with the father of one of the murdered pregnant woman's child. I can see including maybe one of these connections, but both seem a bit extreme. Although both do contribute to why certain things unfold the way they do, there could have been alternative explanations that didn't involve as many coincidences. Other than that, though, it was a great book and I'd give it a 4 out of 5.

<P>: I received a copy of this book from the publisher through the Blogging For Books program in exchange for an honest review.