By Harriet Tyce
This book is about a recently separated-from-her-husband woman who is forced to retreat back to her childhood home. Her home was fraught with manipulation, degradation, and a lack of love from an overbearing mother. Sadie Roper has always been determined to be better than her mother, and to never come back here…o for 2 ain’t bad. To finally capitalize on the prohibitively-detailed will left for her, she must also enroll her daughter, Robin, in the prestigious yet ultimately-just-as-awful-as-she-remembers all-girl school Sadie escaped from decades earlier.
The mothers are hyper-competitive. The girls and their mothers alike all follow the Pied Piper tune of head mom Julia, who takes an instant dislike to Sadie. The repercussions all fall on Robin. Dealing with more than a fair share of tween-girl angst, a husband that is menacing even from across an ocean, and an inability to step back into her barrister career she precipitously left behind for marriage, Sadie is having a hard time.
Suddenly, Julia befriends Sadie – and life completely changes at school for Robin, providing friendships for mother and daughter. Sadie’s best friend gets her an assistant job on a high profile case in court. But all is not well beneath the veneer. A child falls into a coma. A mother is a suspect. A husband returns with a dubious story. An innocent man is only well-connected…it is hard to find the truth.
Pros & Cons & Potential Spoilers
Pros
- Great pacing – I kept wanting to read more
- I too am afraid of Stepford Mother/Wives and their progeny
- Just because you come from a broken home does not doom you to create one yourself
Cons
- None of the big “twists” I love in thrillers right now – saw everything coming
- There was great pacing, but I also felt like I didn’t hear all of the story in some parts – things were left unsaid
- No justice for the guilty, little recompense for the victims