Hold My Girl Charlene Carr

A tense and emotional dual narrative story about motherhood and race.

Katherine likes to be in control. Everything clean, everything perfect, all the time.  After years of trying - and failing - to conceive, she finally gives birth to Rose, Her IVF miracle child.  Yet, she's never quite been able to believe Rose is her daughter, her pale skin not matching Katherine's own.

Tess never got her happy ending.  She took on IVF alongside Katherine and a group of hopeful mothers, but her daughter Hanna was stillborn.  After a series of desperate choices, she's divorced, broke and stuck in a job beneath her skillset.

When Rose is nine months old, both women get a call from the fertility clinic.  There was a mistake - two women's eggs were switched.  One woman has been raising the wrong daugher, while ther other has spent a year grieving a child that wasn't hers.  Katherine's life begins to crumble around her, but for Tessit's the glimmer of hope she needs to keep going.  It'll take a custody battle like no other to decide who really deserves to be Rose's mother - a battle that will push both women to the brink.

Charlene Carr has worked as a writer, editor, facilitator, and run her own Communications business.  She currently lives in Nova Scotia, Canada, with her family.

Hold my Girl is inspired by Charlene's own life.  As a black woman who gave birth to a visibly white baby via IVF, she feared that one day she, too, would recieve a call telling her that her daughter wasn't hers.

Hold My Girl

by Charlene Carr

Welbeck Publishing

RRP: $32.99

Review: Insightful and thought provoking, where human error can cause havoc on families. Film vibes for sure.