3.5 stars rounded up.
To be, or not to be, a mother…
This book is sure to provide an excellent topic for any book club. The whole time I was reading it, I was thinking about how I’d frame questions and guide the discussion. Unfortunately, I think that those women who would appreciate and benefit from this book the most will be unlikely to find or ever read it.
Lucy vanishes from the grocery store parking lot leaving behind her baby, Emma. Everyone has mixed reactions to this disappearance. First thought to be a kidnapping, the situation morphs into something else when her best friend, Michelle accidentally reveals that Lucy wanted out of her life.
Motherhood. It’s almost sacred to the point where any woman who doesn’t embrace it fully or who chooses not to participate in it at all is vilified. I know there are many women who do not like nor want children. That’s fine. And they shouldn’t be hassled about their choice. Being a mom (or a parent) is not easy and sometimes it’s a very rough adjustment. Having a child changes everything in life but more so the life of the mother (woman). Trying to explain that to those that don’t have children or to men is fraught.
It’s a truth that is not universally known or accepted — a woman (mother) can love her children desperately but still long to go back to her life and to the person she was before. Giving up a much loved job or career is hard. No longer having that private couple time is tough on the marriage. Lack of support with child care or begrudging help from the father is frustrating. Lots of things change when a baby is brought home from the hospital. And adjustment is not automatic as all sorts of emotions and physical issues can get in the way.
In a way, all mothers are Lucy. When she goes missing and it’s thought to be a kidnapping, people are sympathetic. When it comes out that she might have left of her own accord due to regret and disenchantment with her life, then she’s lambasted and maligned. Expectations that a mother will never leave no matter what are engraved on the soul. In a society where women who don’t want babies are forced to have them, where birth control fails and accidents happen (or worse), then what is a woman to do when this baby comes after all.
This is a very powerful book that I think most women will have strong opinions about and I’d love to hear them out. I realize that I am not coming from the same place as Lucy and some of the others mentioned in the novel, but I do appreciate that there are many women who feel like they did and they need to be heard and supported.
I was able to listen to the audio book while also following along in the e-book ARC, both provided by the publishers. I honestly did not like the narrator, Victoria Villarreal. Her breathy voice, her speech patterns, and the choppy delivery were really irritating. She would pause between words in a sentence with her deliberate pausing distracting from the reading. Many times I had to stop the audio because I really disliked her performance. The men’s voices were terrible. So, instead of an audio enhancing a book for me, this production detracted from my enjoyment of the story. I would not recommend it.
This is a standalone and is not part of any series.
Genre and tags: book club fiction, women’s fiction, motherhood, regret, adjustment
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