Title: The Day I Lost You

Author: Ruth Mancini

Genre: Thriller/Mystery

Publication Date: 31st July 2025

Publisher: Century Books

Rating: 4/5

Cover:

Summary:

‘I need to report a crime. My baby has been stolen.’

All Lauren wants is a new life in Spain. She’s suffered an unimaginable loss, but at last she has found a home in the pretty seaside town of Mantilla de Mar. Everyone deserves a new start, and Lauren needs to put her past firmly behind her.

Hope has everything: an interesting career as a therapist, an attractive husband, a dream home in the countryside – and, finally, the baby she always longed for. Sam. Her beautiful boy.

But Sam has gone missing.

So when the police tell her that a woman has been found in Spain with a child matching Sam’s description, Hope thinks that her nightmare might be coming to an end.

But Lauren is insisting Sam is her baby. She even has his passport and birth certificate to prove it.

So what really happened to Baby Sam? And who still has secrets to hide?

One child. Two mothers. And a past that won’t let them go.

Review:

For quite a lot of this compelling and twisty book I genuinely could not tell where it was headed – and what the real story of this potentially missing child, Sam, really was. Was it a child abduction, a surrogacy gone wrong or something even more complicated? The narrative is split into different timelines and different narrators giving the reader an intriguing piecing together of the complex connections between the two potential mothers of the child in question. It is almost a story told in reverse as we go back and forwards, learning what has led to the situation we find Lauren in at the beginning of the book. I was fascinated by the author’s note at the start which explains that this book is actually based on a real life case from her career as a lawyer. I would never have guessed that this was the sort of situation that could actually happen and it gave the entire book a very effective sense of resonance and makes everything hit home that little bit harder. It is difficult to say much more about the plot without giving anything away so I will simply say that if you enjoy emotionally compelling and intense mysteries with a thought provoking moral question at the centre then I think you will enjoy The Day I Lost You. I found it propulsive and at times pretty heartbreaking. I would definitely recommend. 

★★★★ 

Huge thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers and the publisher for my place on this tour and for the copy of the book. My review is entirely my own honest opinion.

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