My Name Was Eden

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.)