Tania Robinson

This book is about a woman who kills her elderly mother and the psychosocial aftermath. The praises on the cover of this book are excessive and I’d more describe the book as the following: [Spoilers below] This book tells the story of a middle-aged woman who decides to kill her elderly and ailing mother. She makes the decision to end her mother’s life without much deliberation or consideration of any alternative, sane options. After she kills her mother, she embarks upon a downward spiral of dark, immoral decision making that is ultimately destructive of whatever good remained in her life. While following the protagonist’s journey that day and the day following, the reader is taken along a series of memories from the protagonist’s childhood. This paints a picture that explains intense family dynamics and the implications of a parent’s mental illness on children. It’s revealed that the mother was always selfish and unstable, with a devoted daughter and husband who lived to protect her. It becomes clear that the protagonist is exactly like her mother. She manages to recruit the help of her devoted ex-husband, making him her accomplice, and the two jointly fabricate an escape plan, only for the protagonist to completely betray him and everyone in her life in the end. With every decision the protagonist makes, she takes the easy, cheap, slimy and selfish option and has no regard for how her actions impact others, including her own children. This book is arguably about the implications of growing up with a mentally ill mother and becoming your parent’s parent as a child because the protagonist has very limited emotional intelligence or self awareness in this book. I’m giving the book a 1 star because it was overly dark, gruesome and immoral in a way that seemed to be solely for shock value. There is a good story of family dynamics that underlines the main story, but the main storyline lacks depth and logic. The protagonist and her ex-husband’s lie to the police is extremely flawed to the point that I don’t think anyone would have come up with such a plan. The ending was incomplete and unsatisfying. The author alludes to the fact that the protagonist gets arrested, but leaves it uncertain - perhaps in case she wanted to write a second book? I would have been more satisfied if the protagonist got caught by the police and we knew how they caught her. Was it the hair in the toilet? Was it her flawed timeline? The book was just not worth the read and ended super disappointingly. The extremely dark aspects made it feel gross to read.