A review by obsidian_blue
The Other Mothers by Katherine Faulkner

4.0

So I don't even know what to say about this one, nobody is a good person but this is a compelling story that you won't be able to put-down. Well thought out thriller, but ultimately dropped it a star since the ending just didn't really work for what came before unless it was to show the full hypocrisy of all of these mothers. Full review to come.

Full review: As I said, no one is a good person in this one. And after a while you are going to become quite sick of Tash and Sophie.

"The Other Mothers" follows freelance journalist Tash. She's lonely and quietly drowning dealing with her two year old son and feeling cut off from the other glamorous mothers she sees at the preschool drop off. When a grieving mother who thinks her daughter was murdered reaches out to Tash, she starts investigating what happened to the young woman who was a nanny (Sophie). The book follows Tash in the present (though we do flash back and forward scenes sometimes) and Sophie in the past leading up to the moment of her death.

The thing is that the book plays with your emotions quite well. You have tons of sympathy for Tash and Sophie at first. Until the book slowly starts to unwind both these characters and you see them fully for who they are. And then I guess it's up to you as a reader with where your sympathies lie.

The other mothers in this one are kind of a mess. I really want to say that the major downfall for all of them resides in one character and I could not see it at all.

The ending as I said earlier was a letdown. The whole book kind of fell apart at that point which was a disappointment. I just don't know if Faulkner knew how to end things because what we get strains credulity and it took me out of the story at that point.