Birthrights by Carly Rheilan

                                              

“We are all fractured, there are no unbroken planes in the human spirit.”

A truth that would hold us all to good stead if we accepted it, but we mere mortals instead always put perfection on a pedestal instead.

Carly Rheilan’s new psychological thriller ‘Birthrights’ is more than just plots and twists you don’t see coming. It is a very intrinsic and instinctive look deep down into our souls.

It reaches out and grabs at your very fabric and that of the people that surround you.

This has as much to do with the two very pertinent topics that the book revolves around ‘Mental Health’ and ‘ Surrogacy’ as well as the literary prowess that Carly’s words have.

All the characters and settings feel so realistic that sometimes you just gasp and turn around to see if someone is there. A feat that comes from her background as a psychiatric nurse and working within the NHS.

The story put very, very simply is of a pregnant psychiatrist Dr. Ana Griffin who gets attacked by a patient with a knife blow to the abdomen. The only witness to this is another patient who screams and prevents a further attack. As he jogs across to reach the scene both attacker and victim have disappeared with nary a trace of struggle or blood. Leaving you to guess, is this reality or fiction or an alien abduction.

Or just plain deception.

“The problem with deception was that it created discontinuities. Cracks where real and pretend ran together but couldn’t be joined. The art was to keep the cracks in places where nobody looked.”

Birthrights, not only talks about mental health but subtly delves into even deeper issues that surround it at times, like transference and counter-transference.

“Some would find it strange to work in a profession where love is regarded as breach of trust, and affection as a dangerous aberration. But is it not stranger that those who so fiercely protect patients from the love of clinicians, make no effort to protect them from clinicians’ contempt, their dislike or their petty tyranny? Which, in the end, is the greater betrayal?”

The topic of surrogacy gets more controversial depending on which country and which religion you follow. This is due to the laws of a country dictating whether it be deemed illegal or legal. In the midst of this lies the anguish of several women/men yearning to have their own child. An anguish that comes searing across as you read more of Ana’s story.

And if you thought the concept of surrogacy was new think again…

“Yes. Yes I will if you want! I’ll tell him. And if he tells me that I’m damned, I’ll ask him why it was OK about Abraham and the serving maid. Didn’t Abraham sleep with some servant so that she could have a baby for his wife who couldn’t have one? So was the serving girl damned? Because Abraham did that to her? It’s in the Bible isn’t it?”

The process is just more clinical now.

As we go through life’s ups and downs, various doubts gnaw at all of us. Sometimes we cope and sometimes we can’t. That doesn’t make us any less human. All of us at some point in our lives need help whether it is to walk, read or even to cope. No one is different, we are all one and the same. Human. A point that the author brings out beautifully through her following lines.

“She thought, inconsequentially, what a little thing life was, and she wondered if it was the same for everyone. She wondered if other people were really different from her, or if their lives were bigger somehow, more substantial. Perhaps other people walked on firmer ground, not tugged by the void that sucked between the cracks.”

Birthrights takes you through such a journey. When I started this book it reminded me of the style of books that I absolutely love of both Robin Cook and Michael Crichton but as I delved deeper, the book took on a whole new meaning. A meaning that also seriously gets you thinking into both mental health and surrogacy and how best we could bring about a better treatment or better laws.

Though this book is fiction I think it will profoundly help if it is read by people working/ studying in Mental healthcare and also by lawmakers to work out a universal surrogacy law.

Birthrights had me gasping for more. With each line being more prophetic then the next.

“Everyone had secrets that they hoped would survive their death.”

So glad I got this ARC it was cathartic to read. Hope you liked my fair and honest review.

Happy Reading😊