Let’s start with the positives. This was a pleasant enough read, brisk enough. Our protagonist’s point of view as a mother of an infant was beautifully written and the mundane day-to-day joys and frustrations of parenting a six month old were relatable. I’m paraphrasing badly but the metaphor of an invisible string that connects her to the baby was more poignant than I’m conveying here. I think Ware has an interesting novel about motherhood in her; the relationship between Isa and her baby is the most fully realized in the book.
Which is a problem in a story about friendships so strong that the characters engage in a criminal conspiracy to protect one another. We’re frequently TOLD how devoted the friends are to one another, but it’s hard to understand WHY. The girls are flatly drawn on a scale from Fatima – a relatively fleshed-out newly reverent Muslim doctor written best when her motherhoodis referenced – to Kate, who I can’t remember a single thing about that isn’t related to how she relates to other characters.
The plot is fairly predictable because of those characters – no one is introduced who doesn’t factor into the central mystery in a way that feels predictable rather than economical. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put the pieces together when there are only a handful of options. A pet peeve of mine is when a book alludes to some big event in the past too often without just coming out and saying it as a way of building tension, and it happens once per short chapter here until the big reveal halfway through, by which point it was more or less obvious what happened.
And for as well written as Isa’s experience of motherhood was, her actions make ZERO sense for a new parent. Nearly having an affair, putting her child in dangerous situations after having a panic attack when other people hold her, none of it adds up.
Worth the read, but an easy toss into the resell pile.
