Dear Thing by Julie Cohen

Claire has it all: a beautiful home, a loving husband, a fulfilling job as a music teacher.  Except one thing - a baby.

Romily is her husband's best friend from university,  a single mum working as a scientist and living in a 2 bedroom flat. So why would she offer to act as a surrogate for Claire and Ben, carrying a baby that's genetically hers and Ben's?

Answer: because she is in love with Ben,  and always has been. Partly to please him, partly to live out a long-held dream, she volunteers to do what Claire has never been able to despite years of fertility treatment: have Ben's baby.

From this intriguing concept, Julie Cohen has created a satisfying and compelling novel which follows and encourages us to empathise with both Claire and Romily. From the opening, where Claire goes through the agonising experience of thinking her IVF treatment has been successful,  through Romily's growing doubts about the wisdom of her plan,  the reader is taken inside the characters' minds and sees things from their perspective.

The novel is a page turner too; the ongoing narrative of both Romily's pregnancy and Claire's growing jealousy provides a narrative drive which will keep you turning the pages long into the night.

The title is clever, too: Romily writes letters to her unborn child, addressed to "Dear Thing". We know how much Claire wants this baby, and how much Romily wants Ben to want her. Julie Cohen has created believable, rounded characters grappling with an unusual and difficult situation. I was interested to see in the notes to the book that Cohen had researched infertility through friends and through the internet;  I was impressed by the realism with which she tackled Claire's horrible situation.

Dear Thing is high quality women's fiction, enjoyable for a range of readers. It's a thoughtful and imaginative novel which gets to the heart of the characters. You'll feel you know Claire and Romily by the end of the novel, and be rooting for them to achieve their respective redemptive endings.

I must thank Transworld publishers,  who provided me with a review copy via Net Galley.  Dear Thing was published on 11 April. 

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