She Treads Softly: The Stay-at-Home Mother

Saturday, December 24, 2022

The Stay-at-Home Mother

The Stay-at-Home Mother by Nicole Trope
1/3/23; 246 pages
Bookouture

The Stay-at-Home Mother by Nicole Trope is a highly recommended psychological thriller set in Sydney, Australia.

Terry, Andrea and three-year-old Jack move into a run down house in an expensive neighborhood. Andrea is very pregnant and not pleased with this turn of events. They lost their home due to Terry's gambling problems, so moving into this house, a fixer-upper, is thanks to Andrea's father who knew the person buying it was willing to rent it for awhile to them. Andrea is less than thrilled, but she feels she is stuck in her current situation and that Terry is going to try.

At the beginning Andrea is a bit distrustful when the neighbor across the street, Gabby, reaches out to her in friendship, but soon she is becoming a part of Andrea's life. Gabby is busy with her teenage son, Flynn, but is always available for tea and snacks with Andrea and Jack. She even pulled out some old dinosaurs Flynn used to play with for Jack. Gabby has offered to babysit anytime Andrea needs help. What young, exhausted, pregnant mother doesn't need this kind of support, especially when Andrea is suspicious that Terry is gambling again.

The writing is very good and the plot is fast moving, entertaining, twisty, and surprising. Some of the twists are easily guessed and others are truly surprising. There are several strange, odd occurrences going on and so suspicions and tension will rise while reading. You will be on alert for something to happen, and things do happen, which only results in raising the tension some more. The opening of the narrative will definitely grab your attention and keep you glued to the pages for answers.

The narrative alternates between the point-of-view of Andrea and Gabby. Both women are complex, interesting characters, and both of them are hiding secrets from each other. Andrea is keeping her husband's addiction and how it has ravaged their family's security, financially and physically a secret. Gabby's addiction to social media where she posts about her son was an interesting character trait, but the more engaging trait is that it becomes clear quite that she is a very unreliable and unbalanced narrator.

You may have to suspend disbelief a time or two, but The Stay-at-Home Mother is a great psychological thriller that most readers will enjoy start to finish.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Bookouture via NetGalley.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.