A book about a female serial killer? Um, not really. This is the story of a lonely little girl who bad things happen to and she turns into a lonely old woman. But heartwarming?
I’m giving this a grudging 3.75 stars, bumped up 0.25 from 3.5 because it wrung salty tears out of me. They were dripping down my face, but I was upset about it. This book was so great until the ending, when it did three things I didn’t like (and almost never like in books). I have those hidden under a whited out font below if you are curious. But I really liked Mabel, and 90% of this book was absorbing and full of lovely characters. (Even if I did guess almost every single twist or reveal, save one.) Might read from Sally Hepworth again, but it’s my understanding this is sort of an outlier for her.
The three major sins of Mad Mabel (MAJOR spoilers, highlight at your own risk):
1. Killed off Mabel, without any indication that would be the case by the end. I fail to understand why she was killed, other than to wring angry tears from my eyeballs. It’s manipulative. I RARELY think it’s justified when a main character dies, and it definitely wasn’t here. She could have “sacrificed” herself for Persephone without actually dying. There was no lesson learned from her death. It was just SAAAAD. The author wanted your tears, and that pisses me off. We could still have gotten her leaving her stuff to Peter and everything after she died at age 95 in her sleep. For fuck’s sake, she had enough trouble in her life and loneliness, she finally finds a community and you take it away from her?? Fuck off.
2. Daphne wasn’t real, and it was pretty obvious from about a quarter of the way in. Which is awful! How can you write a book about female friendship if the friend isn’t real!? And if she was a manifestation of Elsie’s mind, that needed a LOT more explanation. Instead of being a reveal, it should have been something we knew the whole time, and got more nuance for.
3. Oh wait, just kidding! Daphne is a magical being that goes around becoming imaginary friends of lonely little girls! This is a fantasy book! And we never even knew it. Ughhhh, writing all this out is making me want to lower my rating back down so I’m going to stop now.
[3.75 stars]
CBR BINGO: Or (this character is definitely faced with choices, one of which has an outcome (see spoiler section) I hated)
