Tech millionaire Miles Cookson is diagnosed with a fatal, hereditary condition and realizes that the nine children he fathered as a sperm donor two decades earlier may have inherited it. Determined to warn them and include them in his estate, Miles sets out to find them. He connects first with Chloe, an aspiring documentary filmmaker who has already been searching for genetic relatives. As Miles tracks down his donor-conceived children, they begin disappearing. The thriller’s second storyline follows Jeremy Pritkin, a wealthy and powerful man with a predilection for underage girls, whose connection to Miles and his children slowly comes into focus. As the body count rises, Miles and Chloe race to uncover who is behind the killings — and why — before there are no children left to find.
DCP Stories Collection
Review
What This Work Does Well
- The three donor conceived characters we spend meaningful time with each have a distinct, realistic relationship to their donor conceived identity, which reflects the diversity of DCP experience rather than a single monolithic response.
- Chloe has real emotional depth. Her curiosity about her biological father feels authentic, and the tension with her lesbian mother (who experiences her daughter’s search as complicated) captures a dynamic many DCP families might recognize.
- All three donor-conceived characters knew they were donor-conceived, and the book treats early disclosure as unremarkable, a quiet but meaningful normalizing choice.
- The novel takes seriously that genetic medical history is important to donor conceived people. Miles’s urgency to find and warn his offspring frames that information as something they are owed rather than something to be hidden.
- Ultimately, the donor conceived characters don’t seem to place much importance on their genetic connection, which is an experience many can relate to.
What Bothered Us
- Donor conception is fundamentally a plot device rather than an aspect of lived identity the book is genuinely interested in exploring.
- The sperm donor is the protagonist. The donor-conceived characters exist largely to facilitate his moral reckoning.
- The thriller’s central premise that being donor conceived makes you a target layers danger and death onto DCP identity in a way that reinforces the idea that donor conception is inherently the origin of crisis.
Content Warnings
- Violence and murder (multiple characters killed or injured on-page)
- Sexual exploitation of minors (Pritkin subplot clearly inspired by Jeffrey Epstein)
