With her father recently moved to a care facility for his worsening dementia, Beth Walsh volunteers to clear out the family home and is surprised to discover the door to her childhood playroom padlocked. She’s even more shocked at what’s behind it—a hoarder’s mess of her father’s paintings, mounds of discarded papers and miscellaneous junk in the otherwise fastidiously tidy house.
As she picks through the clutter, she finds a loose journal entry in what appears to be her late mother’s handwriting. Beth and her siblings grew up believing their mother died in a car accident when they were little more than toddlers, but this note suggests something much darker. Beth soon pieces together a disturbing portrait of a woman suffering from postpartum depression and a husband who bears little resemblance to the loving father Beth and her siblings know. With a newborn of her own and struggling with motherhood, Beth finds there may be more tying her and her mother together than she ever suspected.
Exploring the expectations society places on women of every generation, Kelly Rimmer explores the profound struggles two women unwittingly share across the decades set within an engrossing family mystery that may unravel everything they believed to be true.
I have read most of Kelly Rimmer's previous books with my favorite being A Mother's Confession. I don't think I will ever forget that book. The others I have read have all been solid 4-5 star books. When I saw she had a new book, it was on my list of Must Read! I so wish this review was the same as the others, but unfortunately it's not. I really disliked this novel, it kills me to say this. It started out strong and I was intrigued with her covering the topic of postpartum depression. But after about 20% the book became repetitive and boring. Then, without giving away spoilers, I felt like the book shifted to another topic entirely and I wasn't interested. I had no connection to the characters and just never really cared about any of it. And I've always been 100% emotionally invested in the characters in Rimmer's other books. Even though this was a miss for me, I will still pick up whatever she writes. I look forward to the other stories I know she has to tell.
* I received this book from the author/publisher in exchange for an honest review *
