Review by Booklist Review
Chamberlain (The Stolen Marriage, 2017) steps up her game with her latest, a departure from her usual plot and structure that still maintains the southern style that makes her so well loved among readers. Carly Sears is grieving the loss of her husband in the Vietnam War when she discovers she is pregnant. Joy quickly turns to distress when she finds out that her unborn daughter, the only thing she has left of her husband, has a heart problem. The medicine of 1970 isn't advanced enough to fix it, forcing her to face the inevitable death of her daughter before she is even born. Carly's brother-in-law, Hunter, comes to her with a plan to save the baby, one that seems utterly unbelievable and challenges what she knows to be true, yet may be her only hope. Chamberlain stretches her sense of familial relationships and toe-curling suspense in new directions, weaving in elements of trust, history, and time as she explores the things we do for love. With a little tension and a lot of heart, The Dream Daughter will delight Chamberlain's fans and hook new readers.--Tracy Babiasz Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Chamberlain's exciting and heartfelt novel (after The Stolen Marriage) follows one woman who risks everything to travel through time and save the life of her unborn child. In 1970, after the death of her husband in the Vietnam War, pregnant Carly Sears moves in with her sister, Patti, and brother-in-law, Hunter, at their beach home in Nags Head, N.C. There, Carly finds that tragedy has followed her: she discovers that her unborn child has a fatal heart defect. It's at this point that Hunter reveals to Carly that he is a time traveler from the future and offers Carly a solution: she can time travel to 2001, where her child can receive life-saving fetal surgery. Carly finally believes Hunter's claims about time travel when his predictions about the tragic events at Kent State come true days later. After time traveling to 2001, Carly and her unborn child undergo an experimental surgery, remaining in New York City near the hospital prior to and after her daughter Joanna's birth. But Carly's plan to return to 1970 with Joanna is derailed when her daughter becomes ill and must remain hospitalized. Chamberlain expertly blends the time-travel elements with the wonderful story of a mother's love and the depths of sacrifice she makes for her child. This is a page-turning crowd-pleaser. 150,000-copy announced first printing. Agent: Susan Ginsburg, Writers House. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A devoted mother is forced to make a terrible choice when 9/11 glitches her brother-in-law's time-travel calculations in Chamberlain's (The Stolen Marriage, 2017, etc.) latest.Caroline "Carly" Grant is a physical therapist in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her patient Hunter Poole refuses to use the crutches he needs to walk while his broken leg mends. Carly soon discovers Hunter isn't the suicidal accident victim he's presumed to be. In fact, he's a time traveler from the future. Hunter meets and marries Carly's Beatles-obsessed sister, Patti, fixing him in the late 1960s. That proves convenient when Carly, pregnant and recently widowed by her husband's death in Vietnam, is told her baby has a fatal heart defect. Hunter arranges for Carly to time travel to 2001. With the grudging assistance of Hunter's mother, Myra Poole, who runs a time-travel research program, Carly has fetal surgery and delivers her baby. Newborn Johanna Elizabeth proves so unhealthy she's hospitalized for most of the next four months, forcing Carly to time travel back to 1970 without her. Traveling through time is fraught with danger for not only the traveler, but also the reader, who's asked to suspend a lot of disbelief, accept arbitrary and at times inconsistent rules of time travel, and try not to guess several obvious plot twists. Still, Carly is a likable heroine, and if many of her difficulties are easily overcome, she's nonetheless caught in a heart-wrenching dilemma as she realizes time travel is, "if anything, an inexact science."The story is well-paced and the ending satisfyingly sweet despite its predictability. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
