🌸 Book Review (Spoilers!): Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth
⭐️ 4 out of 5 stars | Genre: Domestic Thriller / Psychological Fiction
🚨 Big spoilers ahead! If you want to be shocked by all the Amy-related reveals yourself, stop reading now!
📍 Darling Girls — Twisty, Dark, and Totally Hooked Me
This book had me glued. I needed to know what happened at Wild Meadows. And let me tell you — Sally Hepworth delivered twist after twist after twist.
It’s dark, it’s layered, and it kept me guessing the whole time.
🧵 The Full Plot — Clear on the Two Amys!
👧 The Foster Sisters
We meet Jessica, Norah, and Alicia — three foster sisters who grew up together at Wild Meadows.
➡ Their foster mother, Miss Fairchild, was absolutely awful.
➡ She emotionally and physically abused the girls and manipulated them in terrifying ways.
When they lived there, there was also a foster baby — a 2-year-old girl named Amy.
👉 The older girls adored her and felt responsible for protecting her.
🚨 The First Big Twist
One day, the sisters decide to report Miss Fairchild to the police.
BUT — when they do?
➡ The police say there’s no Amy.
➡ No records. No trace of her ever existing.
What really happened?
Jessica, desperate for Miss Fairchild’s approval, secretly warned her that they were about to report her.
➡ Miss Fairchild made Amy disappear — and wiped out all evidence the baby ever lived with them.
💀 The Present Day
Fast forward to now:
✔️ A child’s body is found buried at Wild Meadows.
✔️ The sisters — still close as adults — wonder if it’s their little Amy who vanished all those years ago.
Meanwhile, Miss Fairchild, now in prison, is spilling her “life story” to a prison psychologist… or so it seems.
🧠 Miss Fairchild’s Story (The One She Tells)
Here’s what Miss Fairchild claims:
✔️ She was abused by her stepfather John growing up.
✔️ John molested her.
✔️ John got her pregnant.
✔️ She had a baby — her biological baby, Amy — and tried to escape with the baby.
✔️ John killed baby Amy to punish her.
She says this trauma is what drove her to foster kids, and later illegally adopt.
🤯 The True Final Twist
But that’s not the real story.
➡ John never molested Miss Fairchild.
➡ That original baby Amy wasn’t hers at all.
➡ Baby Amy was the child of John and Miss Fairchild’s mother — her baby sister.
➡ Miss Fairchild resented this baby for “stealing” attention.
One night, when left to babysit, Miss Fairchild killed her baby sister Amy.
👉 Her mother buried the body on the property and helped cover it up to protect Miss Fairchild.
Years later, Miss Fairchild named one of her foster babies Amy — the toddler the sisters knew — in some twisted, guilt-ridden attempt to recreate the sister she killed.
So the body found?
➡ It’s baby sister Amy — the first Amy.
🧠 My Take
✅ I didn’t see any of this coming. Every twist hit me like a ton of bricks.
✅ Atmosphere was on point. Wild Meadows was haunting.
✅ Loved how the sisters stayed close despite everything.
❌ That final twist? Maybe one too many. It made me feel like Miss Fairchild dodged accountability for way too long.
❌ I almost wish it had stopped at the foster Amy reveal.
Still — I flew through this book.
✨ Final Thoughts
I’m giving Darling Girls 4 out of 5 stars.
✔️ Dark, twisty, and unforgettable
✔️ A must-read if you love complicated family secrets
✔️ Be ready — it does not hold back
📚 If You Liked This, Try:
🏚 The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell — creepy family mysteries
👭 The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth — dark sibling drama
🔪 Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell — another shocking missing-child tale
🛒 Buy Darling Girls
👉 Get it on Amazon (affiliate link)
💬 Let’s Talk!
Did you see those twists coming? Did the two Amy situation break your brain like it did mine? Drop a comment — I want to hear your thoughts!
Comments
Post a Comment