A review by themountaingoats
The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard

i skipped so much it’s disingenuous to say i finished this. way way way way way too long, but the central idea is interesting and compelling in the exact blockbuster-y way it should be (the kid who was stolen has had a better time of it than the kids that were left, where do you go from there?). it doesn’t work for a lot of reasons but like. especially because it can’t decide what to do tonally, and it’s really conflicted on what it wants its goal to actually be. beth remains so unsympathetic that it’s hard to understand how the novel is pushing for the reunited family angle, but it refuses to have any lasting heft as a study of a bad mother who experienced something impossible. whatever, i’m bored on a train and writing too much about an oprah pick