As a woman and a physician who’s undergone a fertility work-up, I was very interested in reading Her Daughter’s Mother by Daniela Petrova. Little did I know I was getting myself into a psychological thriller. Entranced, I stayed up until four a.m. to finish the book in one sitting.
Lena is a savvy woman, an art historian at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and has spent years developing her career. For the past eight years she’s been living with her boyfriend. They’ve struggled with infertility so long that they’ve lost sight of everything else in their relationship.
When at last they decide to use the eggs of an anonymous donor, Lena inadvertently befriends that young woman which leads to unforeseen tragic consequences in her life, that of her boyfriend, and that of the donor.
This book gripped me from the beginning, and I enjoyed all the plot twists and turns revealed through the points of view of three different unreliable narrators and interwoven with the events of the infertility process.
This story is more than a thriller, though; it’s also a story about women finding connections with each, searching for redemption, and defining “family.” At the heart of this novel is two women’s journey toward finding family, connection, and redemption, which took the novel beyond the usual psychological suspense.
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