Little Disasters: the compelling and thought-provoking new novel from the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Anatomy of a Scandal

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This book looks to these women who try to balance everything, one being a single parent, another being unhappy in her marriage and unable to conceive and desiring another"s husband and Jess, not understanding why she is unable to function as she had done previously. And when pressed by Liz, Jess is oddly vague, evasive, and unable to provide a satisfactory explanation. Her husband Ed is good at earning the beans (and plenty beans) but is content to leave parenting to Jess with disastrous consequences.

The baby’s injuries leave authorities, as well as Jess’s friends and family, wondering if Jess herself could have harmed her baby. Vaughan’s difficult pregnancy forced a sudden, silent shift—from an identity built around her work as a journalist to one of unfamiliar isolation, with no friends or family nearby.The book begins with Liz, a pediatrician, who is suddenly faced with an ethical and personally difficult decision when her good friend, Jess, comes into the emergency room with her 10 month old daughter, Betsey. When Liz find some that the child has a head injury and Jess’ story doesn’t add up she’s has no choice but to report it to social services. Liz has memories of her own troubled, hard-drinking mother, whose neglect caused a terrible injury to her brother. While on the flip side, the tragic ordeal that surrounds Jess highlights the pressure mothers place on themselves to achieve parenting perfection, the lack of support for mothers, OCD, postnatal depression, infidelity and parenting roles. Told primarily from the points of view of Liz and Jess, Liz is working at the hospital when Jess comes in with her third child, a baby girl.

My fourth novel, Little Disasters, partly set in a hospital and in a similar vein to Anatomy, was published in April 2020, during the first lockdown, and was a Waterstone’s Thriller of the Month. She sounds like she has been through so much and that it was important for her to get the details of this book right and I can’t help but be intrigued by that dedication and her story! I have to hand it to Sarah Vaughan, I was so fixated on a certain vein of the storyline that I was thinking this was pretty much a 3 star.

The walls push in; the heat bears down and the noise - the terrible crying that has been going on for three hours - engulfs her. They just estranged a little bit because of Liz’s over demanding profession, kids, husband and other activities fills her life and Jess also didn’t make any effort to connect with her either. Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review.