Amazon Publishing: 10/1/18
eBook review copy; 352 pages
ISBN-13: 9781503903616
We Were Mothers by Katie Sise is a so-so soap opera of a novel full of secrets.
The novel is set in an upscale suburban neighborhood and the story unfolds through the points-of-view of four characters. Cora is the mother of two year old twins and understandably tired while trying her best. She finds a dairy of the neighbor's college-aged daughter, Mira, claiming that Cora's husband kissed Mira after a baby sitting job. Laurel is the neighbor, mother of Mira, and has secrets of her own. When Mira disappears, she is frantic. Jade is a friend of Cora. Her husband wants them to have a baby. Sarah is the mother of Cora and is still mourning her deceased daughter Maggie.
The narrative unfolds over the course of one weekend when events trigger a chain of circumstances that begin to slowly expose more and more secrets. Every chapter exposes a new secret and reveals a tangled mess of new information. All the women are distraught victims and all the men are scoundrels in this over-the-top melodramatic story. All the improbable twists affecting every character during this one weekend are farfetched and left me shaking my head.
If you enjoy scandalous melodramatic novels where everyone has a trunk full of secrets and can suspend disbelief when everything is exposed and hits the fan all at once AND don't mind that all the women are victims and the men villains, then by all means pick this novel up. Or if you want to read something mindless and fluffy with a flimsy soap opera plot full of caricatures without distinct voices or character development, then give it a try. There is, ostensibly, a message about empowerment for women at the end, but it arrived way-too-late to the plot. At least one character should have had the enlightenment to be true to herself long before this weekend happened.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the publisher.
No comments:
Post a Comment