After She Left by Claire Amarti

​I read Amarti’s Silent Daughter. It was another kindle freebie some time ago. It was decent enough, a perfectly decent midrange thriller of the sort of thrillers that are so popular these days. Then I found this book as a freebie and figured it would be more of the same. But no…should have read the small print.
Granted, it is designed to seem the same, from cover to title to even the book’s structure. It’s one of those…your sister is gone thrillers. Only after she left…there’s not much. Because, dear readers, this isn’t a thriller.
Aha, Amarti fooled us. Or at least, didn’t warn us adequately. 
What this book is, really, is a Lifetime movie rendered as women’s fiction. Not literature, mind you – women’s fiction at its estrogen-soaked lachrymose ubersincerity is seldom if ever that. Ok, well, let the emotional manipulation proceed.
And to think, I was pissed off just to find out it was one of those mommy thrillers. And it isn’t even a freaking thriller. Although, very mommy-heavy.
The protagonist has a nice life but can’t get pregnant and despite not having tried for all that long and despite not being that old she is FREAKING out about it. 
Meaning her entire life is about having or not having a baby.
Meaning her sister’s disappearance is hugely inconvenient.
Now she’s stuck babysitting her precocious ten-year-old nephew who talks like an adult and has a very obvious OCD. She doesn’t notice it, of course, because her mind is so far up her uterus.
Instead, she thinks about babies, babies, babies. And occasionally about where her sister gone off to.
And the entire plot hinges on taking DNA tests – one of the dumbest latest trends of the discretion-free era. And some family secrets. And, to no one’s surprise, it’s ALL about kids.
So yeah, it’s kind of tedious. Even though Amarti is actually a pretty decent writer and knows a thing or two about drawing the readers in.
The only likeable character is the ten-year-old. The rest of the novel is just flopping emotions emoting all over the place driven by the potent desire to breed at all costs. 
So yeah, now you know. Tricky mismarketing ploy to dress this weeper into a thriller. That's a pregnancy frock, people, not a trench coat. Pass.