She Treads Softly: Loving Mothers

Monday, September 23, 2024

Loving Mothers

Loving Mothers by Miranda Smith
10/3/24; 316 pages
Bookouture

Loving Mothers by Miranda Smith is a highly recommended suburban mom domestic thriller.

After gated community Hickory Hills holds a neighborhood halloween party, Donna Bledsoe's sixteen year old daughter Shelby goes missing. She calls her friend Mary Holden, the queen bee, because Mary's daughter Grace is best friends with Shelby. Friends and neighbors Naomi Davis and Janet Parks come to lend their support. New-to-the-neighborhood Stella Moore also lends her support. Her son Hudson is the new kid at school. Mary keeps insisting Hudson was Shelby's boyfriend, but he says no. He and Grace are actually talking to each other.

There is no doubt that Loving Mothers has plenty of twists and will hold your complete attention from start to finish, however, it can also be said that this plot, protective secretive mothers, has been covered many times before. Think 'Mean Girls' but with suburban moms in their thirties and forties.

The well constructed plot unfolds from the multiple viewpoints of several characters and covers the missing teen along with other personal problems and gossip between neighbors. Every character is flawed. Expect plenty of secrets, twists, drinking, drama, gossip, and deflection. The ending is surprising. Thanks to Bookouture for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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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.