Review by Booklist Review
Lucy Hamilton loves her teenage daughter, Eden, but she doesn't always like her very much. Lucy's already complicated maternal feelings are compounded by a steady stream of what-ifs. Eden was meant to be a twin, but her brother died in utero. Lucy and her husband had grieved for unborn baby Eli, but Lucy never fully let go of the idea of a family of four. After a near-death experience lands Eden in the hospital, her recovery changes the shape of the Hamilton family yet again--and not entirely for the better. This darkly atmospheric thriller in the vein of Nicola Marsh's The Scandal (2020), Helen Klein Ross' What Was Mine (2016), and Nicole Baart's Little Broken Things (2017) puts a family's long-held secrets in jeopardy under mysterious circumstances. Lucy serves as the central narrator, but Eden and her best friend, Charlie, voice a few chapters, adding layers of intrigue. Exploring the shared burdens of grief, recovery, and misplaced loyalties, My Name Was Eden is a compelling debut.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Barker-White debuts with a flimsy domestic thriller about a British mother's unnerving experience with vanishing twin syndrome. Lucy Hamilton's life seems perfect: she lives in a large house on the outskirts of England's Lake District, where she dotes on her handsome, successful husband, James, and precocious 14-year-old daughter, Eden. Then tragedy strikes. After Eden nearly drowns in a small lake near the Hamiltons' home one afternoon, she loses consciousness and it's touch-and-go at the hospital as doctors attempt to revive her. When she finally wakes up, she tells the medical staff that her name is Eli--the same name Lucy chose for Eden's brother when she learned she was pregnant with fraternal twins. Due to a rare condition called vanishing twin syndrome, Eden absorbed Eli while both were still in Lucy's womb, but it now appears that the unborn boy has emerged from the depths of Eden's consciousness. Unlike his sister, he's less willing to keep family secrets and prone to violence. Chapters alternate between the perspectives of Lucy and a friend of Eden/Eli's, but Barker-White never quite utilizes the dueling viewpoints or Lucy's unsettling plight to ignite a properly nerve-shredding thriller, and the plot reversals are too obvious for things to take flight. This misses the mark. (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT The unreliable narrator in Barker-White's debut has good reason to be uncertain about what she thinks is true. Housewife Lucy is mildly concerned when her teenage daughter Eden doesn't show up after school. Concern turns to horror when Eden is pulled unresponsive from a nearby lake. When Eden is revived, Lucy and her husband James are thrilled. Then Eden's behavior changes radically. She insists that her name is Eli, which alone wouldn't be too alarming, as teenagers explore identity all the time. But Eli was Eden's twin who vanished in the womb. As Eden's behavior becomes more alarming, it seems that only Lucy is concerned. After postpartum depression, she has always felt disconnected from Eden, made worse by Eden's closeness to James. This new version of her child is so different--and now Eden/Eli is taking steps, sometimes dangerous, scary ones, to make sure things go her way. VERDICT This strong debut successfully explores intergenerational trauma in a twisty thriller with enough notes of horror to require reading with all the lights on. For fans of Zoje Stage and Lucinda Berry.--Jane Jorgenson
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
When a teenage girl is revived after nearly drowning, she insists on being called by a new name. Is it trauma--or is she possessed by the spirit of her dead twin? When Lucy Hamilton's daughter, Eden, is pulled from a nearby lake in the English countryside, it looks like the worst has happened--until she begins to breathe again. But while still in the hospital, she starts to insist that her name is Eli, which was the name of her unborn brother lost to vanishing twin syndrome. When Lucy and James bring their child home, she cuts her hair, begins to dress more androgynously, and continues to insist that her name isn't Eden. On one hand, Lucy is relieved, because her relationship with her child has been combative for some time, and this new incarnation is sweet and demonstrative; on the other, she's concerned, understandably, about what's really going on. James has no time for this drama; he's super busy with work (and maybe an affair?) and then his mother dies in a fall down the stairs. Then a boy from Eden's school is hit by a car. Across these spikes of action, Lucy is also dealing with her own repressed childhood trauma. The strangest thing about this novel is that, despite the title, Barker-White never directly writes in the voice or perspective of Eden, focusing primarily on Lucy as narrator with an occasional chapter dedicated to Charlie, Eden's best friend. Instead, we are left to try to solve an unsolvable mystery, with insufficient clues and a twist at the end that offers no clarity. The other discomfiting thing is that we are offered a character who seems to identify as male, totally out of sync with his female body, and we are asked to consider this strange and even villainous. At one point Charlie asks whether Eden "want[s] to actually be a boy," but Eden rebuffs the question; it seems tone deaf not to explore this possibility more directly. Some interesting exploration of the "evil twin" cliche, but ultimately too ambiguous. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
