Prom Mom by Laura Lippman
7/25/23; 320 pages
HarperCollins
Prom Mom by Laura Lippman is a highly recommended domestic
psychological suspense novel.
Amber Glass was known as "Prom Mom," the girl who gave birth and allegedly killed her baby while her date Joe Simpson or "Cad Dad," chased after an ex-girlfriend. Even though Amber escaped from her past in Baltimore, which made the tabloids, she chose to return and stay after her stepfather passed away. She's opening an art gallery and plans to stay out of Joe's way, maybe.
Joe is still in town, a successful commercial real estate
developer, and married to a plastic surgeon, Meredith, his soul
mate but that doesn't stop him from having affairs. His current
lover is a young realtor, Jordan Altman, but he pursues a
relationship with Amber. When the pandemic and lockdown occur, it
threatens Joe's way of life as well as his financial bottom line.
The writing and character development is phenomenal, as expected.
Readers won't necessarily like any of the characters, but you will
immediately know who they are and how they fit into the plot and
the time period. The plot will pull you right into the story and
hold your attention throughout. Prom Mom is a slow-moving
novel but is worth the time to reach the end. There is a twist at
the end that I didn't anticipate and appreciated quite a bit.
Parts of this narrative were very engrossing and parts made me roll my eyes. Any pandemic or lockdown plot element is an immediate negative for me. It sets the novel in a specific time period and immediately dates it. This one wasn't too pompous retelling those events, but enough to turn me off.
And if you have to write about the pandemic, give us some
realistic action featuring the people who were working everyday with no time off at home to
provide you care or toilet paper and frozen food. Call all of us
essential but admit, at the time, we were expendable.
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