VBT# She Stole My Baby - Jessica Huntley

VBT Review - She Stole My Baby - Jessica Huntley - July 2026

Grab a cuppa and get comfy, because I have another one for you from an author who has fast become one of my absolute favourites  Jessica Huntley. I've had the pleasure of being part of a few of her book tours now, and every single time I come away thinking "how does she keep doing this to me?" She Stole My Baby is no exception, and honestly, it might just be one of her best yet.

If you've hung around this blog for any length of time, you'll know my weakness. Found family? Yes please. Identical twins? Sign me up. Mistaken identity that spirals into absolute chaos? I am there. This book ticks every single one of those boxes and then wraps them up in a thriller so tense I had to keep reminding myself to breathe.

We meet Poppy first,  a woman who did the thing so many of us dream of doing and quietly worry we can't: she built a career and became a mum. A one night stand left her with her daughter Maddie, and against the odds, she made it work. A good job, a trusted nanny, a life that finally felt settled. You know, the kind of hard-won ordinary happiness that makes you want to reach into the pages and protect it for her.

Then there's Layla. My heart genuinely ached for her. She wanted nothing more than to be a mother, and after tragedy stripped that away from her, we watch her life come undone thread by thread. It's the kind of grief that curdles into something darker, and Jessica Huntley writes that unravelling so convincingly that you almost understand how Layla ends up where she does.

When Layla is mistaken for Poppy by a stranger, something shifts in her. She starts pulling at the threads of Poppy's life, and what she uncovers is the gut-punch of the story: the two of them could be identical twins. And once that thought takes root, it festers. Layla decides Poppy's life was meant to be hers all along and the first thing she reaches for is Maddie.

I don't think I've held my breath quite like I did during the daycare scene. Poppy arriving to collect her daughter, only to be told Maddie was signed out hours ago by "her" that moment where the ground just falls away. And then the horror of not being believed, of standing face to identical face with the police thinking you're the confused one. It's such a clever, cruel use of the mistaken identity trope, because it doesn't just fool the characters around Poppy, for a moment, it makes you question the ground under your own feet too.

To save Maddie, Poppy has to go somewhere she never wanted to go again: back into her own past, including a visit to her mother in prison. This is where the found family thread really got me discovering the sister she never knew she had, a twin her mother gave away, reframes everything Poppy thought she understood about her family. It's messy and painful and so, so human.

Jessica Huntley has such a gift for making you love and fear for two women at once, even when one of them is doing something unforgivable. This isn't a book with a cardboard villain,  Layla's descent feels tragic as much as it feels terrifying, and that's a hard balance to strike. Meanwhile Poppy's fight to get her daughter back, racing against time while nobody quite believes her, kept my heart in my throat right up to the end.

If you love thrillers with real emotional weight behind the twists,  the kind where the danger comes wrapped in family, in identity, in the question of who we might have been this one is an absolute must-read. Cosy up somewhere you won't be interrupted, because once Maddie goes missing, you will not want to put this down.

Another triumph from Jessica Huntley. I can't wait to see what she does next.

Amazon: https://link.amazon/B0hZP5mDn