The Wrong Child started off as a great family drama that I thought might earn a special spot on my keeper shelf. That would have been wonderful, as I’ve read a string of “eh” books lately. A turn worthy of the Lifetime Channel, however, steered this one down to a C+ for me.

Abbie Bernard adores her daughter Kendall. The precocious 11-year-old looks and acts nothing like her, but that’s always made her more special to Abbie. A blood test reveals that there’s a good reason for the lack of similarity: Kendall is not Abbie’s biological daughter. Abbie decides to find out what happened and discovers that during the crazy blizzard when she gave birth, another baby was born and the two girls were switched. Erin O’Connell is really Abbie’s daughter. After Abbie finds Erin, she tells Erin’s widowed father Logan the truth. Now they must decide what to do because each parent wants to know her/his biological child.

Kendall and Logan are engaging, charming, and nice. Abbie and Erin are definitely more like each other, but where Abbie has developed a little bit of a backbone, poor Erin is still painfully shy. While the characters seemed well enough drawn at the start, they seemed to take a back seat to the inevitability of where the plot was leading them when, after knowing Abbie for all of six weeks, Logan proposed marriage. Perhaps I’ve become used to sensational media portrayals of this kind of issue, but Logan’s solution of marriage for Abbie and him seemed inappropriate. They don’t take advantage of Logan’s psychologist sister, or anyone else, to get counseling before or very soon after the wedding.

Author Kay does write well and drew me into the story from the start. Abbie’s reaction to finding out about Kendall was totally believable. Kay also lets the reader get to know several characters – Abbie, Kendall, Erin, Logan, Elizabeth (Logan’s sister-in-law, who has the hots for him), and Katherine, Abbie’s mother. The author did such a good job on these characters that by the end of the story, as Elizabeth drove away for the last time, I hoped she’d die in a wreck on her way home. What a witch, using an 11-year-old girl to try manipulating Logan into marrying her!

There was a problem, though, in getting to hear the girls’ point of view. They came across as older than 11. It’s been a while since I was that age, and I don’t have kids, but these girls seemed awfully mature. Another problem was the lack of romance. As the love grows between Abbie and Logan, there’s not enough time spent there. Kay covers several months here, often skipping a few between chapters, which makes it difficult to sustain romance. It felt more like a comfortable friendship.

I realize this is a situation that would be unbelievably hard on any family, and told within the confines of 336 pages, there have to be readily available solutions that fit the conventions of a romance novel: secrets, misunderstandings, and the big climax leading to a happy ending in the epilogue. Knowing that made it easier for me to enjoy this story, as does the character of Kendall, easily my favorite. It just didn’t make it easier to believe.