Editorial Content for The Surrogate Mother

In her Author’s Note that opens THE SURROGATE MOTHER, Freida McFadden points out that her readers can count on her psychological thrillers never to contain gratuitous sex scenes or anything too gory. To be perfectly honest, her intricately plotted novels do not need any of that. The payoff lies in the fact that we must follow along very closely to pick up on each and every clue, red herring and plot twist that will lead to the ultimate reveal.

THE SURROGATE MOTHER follows this formula to a tee, and you can either play armchair sleuth and try to figure things out long before the big reveal, or simply sit back and let the story wash over you as another one of her protagonists gets caught in a situation with seemingly no escape. The prologue introduces us to Abby, who wants nothing more out of life than her own child but now is being told by her attorney that she should accept a 15-year plea deal for a crime she swears she did not commit.

"[H]eads will be spinning long before this twisty tale has concluded. Freida McFadden continues to prove that she is one of the most inventive psychological thriller writers working today."

We then dive into the story, set one year earlier, and watch in horror as the baby shower that Abby’s coworkers are throwing her at their marketing firm ends in bitter disappointment when the adoption that she and her husband, Samuel, had been counting on falls through. It is ironic and cruel that the campaign Abby is working on for her slave-driving boss, Denise Holt, is for a baby products company called Cuddles. Seeing how heartbroken she is, Abby’s personal assistant, Monica, makes the surprising offer to be a surrogate for them and carry their child to term in exchange for them covering her return to graduate school.

Sam is reluctant at first. As a math professor, he looks at everything logically and sees the potential pitfalls. However, after a dinner meeting with Monica goes extremely well, the three of them agree to dive into this arrangement. One of the biggest of the early red herrings that McFadden throws at us is when Monica shows an extremely proficient, working knowledge of serious mathematics, which helps to sell Sam on the deal. However, it is when Abby begins the expected deep-dive background check into Monica that some things do not add up.

What transpires over the course of this intense read is one situation after another that appears to back Abby into a corner and out of the three-pronged baby relationship. It also seems that Sam and Monica have become unexpectedly close at the same time that Abby has her Cuddles campaign sabotaged, putting her in a bad way with Denise. When Abby is subsequently fired after testing positive for meth, she knows something is up.

As Denise begins to put two and two together and grows suspicious of Monica, she contacts Abby and asks her to come to the office after hours to discuss the matter. Upon arrival, Abby comes across a room full of blood and the lifeless body of her boss, a crime for which the prologue introduced to us as one that Abby was about to go down hard for.

THE SURROGATE MOTHER throws this and so much more at the reader that heads will be spinning long before this twisty tale has concluded. Freida McFadden continues to prove that she is one of the most inventive psychological thriller writers working today.