The mother in law by sally Hepworth is about a wealthy matriarch found dead in her home. The book goes back and forth between Diane, the matriarch and Lucy, the daughter in law in the years and months before Diane’s death.
I wanted to like this book so badly. Ever since I read Graeme Simsion’s Rosie Trilogy, I have been wanting to read more Australian authors. But I don’t think this one did it for me. In fact, the relationships were utterly typical and I was unendingly frustrated with the “I was going to say this but I didn’t”, most of the women in the book did this as if biting their tongue was anything more than a convenient way for the plot to be more entangled.
It felt completely outdated. With the exception of the occasional mention of pop culture references (game of thrones and Lucy’s judgment of an Instagram fit model), this story could have happened at any time. Usually that’s a good thing, something about it being timeless, but in this case, it just felt like a lack of world-building and development. The unique portion of the book comes from Diane’s charity work with refugees, which because of her wealth is expected but it is touching to see how hands-on she is. A gaping hole in the plot was how Tom and Diane acquired such wealth. In the first chapters, we are shown the absolute opulence they live in, however, we don’t get an origin story, which would probably have been more interesting than Lucy getting in her feelings about not getting gushed over by her future (at the time) mother in law.
Miscommunication or noncommunication as a plot device is just lazy. I don’t think that people live like that. Maybe my family is just extremely blunt. The characters, with the exception of Tom are entirely ungrateful, Diane, at times, reminded me of Marla Hemmings from Dig by A.S.King. While not racist, the withholding of financial support from her kids is a main point of comparison. Lucy is very plain; the most interesting things about her are her past (which isn’t even about her) and her blindness to the issues in her home (ignoring the bills because that’s not her “role”). The other side characters are one dimensional, a woman who is obsessed with having a baby, a man who is a shoddy businessman, a husband who cheats, and another husband just works at things, even when it is clear they don’t work. They read as rich boring entitled brats so if the point was for me to dislike them, mission accomplished.
The big twist at the end, wasn’t a surprise to me but did feel a little unexpected, simply because it wasn’t rational nor developed. While I thought the book was well written, it didn’t exactly strike me as memorable. Writing the review, I forgot several characters’ names. None of them stayed with me after the book was done. I can appreciate it for what it is: a run of the mill domestic whodunnit.
Reading Reckless : Rants and Raves 