Book Review: Baby Doll by Hollie Overton
An evil baby doll rises from the depths of hell and drives a haunted ice cream truck through upper-middle-class neighborhoods, serving treats that infect children with demons.
OK, ok, maybe I’ve veered from the plot just a hair. Here’s the true summary:
In Room…wait, I mean Baby Doll, a kidnapped woman and her child break free from the clutches of her longtime kidnapper, but they have trouble adjusting to life back in the real world.
I kind of liked my first description better.
Baby Doll is a good book, although the setup is extremely similar to Room.
A teen girl named Lily is kidnapped, kept for years, has a baby while in captivity, then escapes while the child is young and malleable enough to be molded into someone somewhat normalish after a tough adjustment period. Her mother experiences guilt and frustration in the process, and her Dad proves himself not strong enough to deal with her kidnapping.
Yes, it’s been done before very similarly albeit not identically, but that’s not to say Baby Doll isn’t enjoyable.
Almost more interesting than Lily’s kidnapping and the aftermath is how Lily’s twin sister deals with it; she’s a broken woman for many years.
When Lily comes home after years of kidnapdom, her twin puts the pieces of her life back together. But that’s the thing about repairing something once it’s broken; there will always be cracks. Some too large to mend. Lily may have been the one in captivity, but her sister was also a prisoner to the situation.
I’m unsure whether to give Baby Doll three or four stars. It’s similar to Room in that it takes the book’s foundation and builds a slightly different house on top of it. But the house is still pleasantly inhabitable, albeit made with slightly cheaper, less durable materials.
Let’s go with four stars.
And then there are the comparisons to Gone Girl. Comparing a book to Gone Girl has become somewhat of a pet peeve for me. Just because it has a complex female character or a slightly suspenseful plot (I wouldn’t really call Baby Doll a suspense novel, BTW) doesn’t mean the marketing has to use Gone Girl to sell the book.
It’s insulting to both authors who probably want their books to stand on their own merits (errrrrr, my comparison to Room notwithstanding), and frankly, it’s somewhat insulting to women. Why all the frenzy over multi-dimensional, not always nice women? Are people just now realizing they exist?
