Thoughts on : The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy

Posted by on May 26, 2019 11:01 am in 3.5 stars reads | 4 comments

The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy
Genre : Thriller
Stand alone

About the Book  :

They call themselves the May Mothers—a collection of new moms who gave birth in the same month. Twice a week, they get together in Prospect Park, seeking refuge from the isolation of new motherhood.

When the group’s members agree to meet for drinks at a hip local bar, they have in mind a casual evening of fun, a brief break from their daily routine. But on this sultry Fourth of July night during the hottest summer in Brooklyn’s history, something goes terrifyingly wrong: one of the babies is abducted from his crib. Winnie, a single mom, was reluctant to leave six-week-old Midas with a babysitter, but the May Mothers insisted that everything would be fine. Now Midas is missing, the police are asking disturbing questions, and Winnie’s very private life has become fodder for a ravenous media.

Though none of the other members in the group are close to the reserved Winnie, three of them will go to increasingly risky lengths to help her find her son. And as the police bungle the investigation and the media begin to scrutinize the mothers in the days that follow, damaging secrets are exposed, marriages are tested, and friendships are formed and fractured.

My Thoughts :

I’m not sure what I expected exactly from The Perfect Mother, but I finished the book feeling pleasantly surprised. It was a good thriller that mixed interesting characters with a well crafted plot.

Something about The Perfect Mother reminded me of Liane Moriarty’s books, except with more mystery and less character development. Although the characters were quite different from one another, in some spots I found myself confusing a few of them. I rarely say this for a thriller, but I wish we could have got a few pages more to better define them, because I liked them and their relationships. I do think, however, that many readers will relate to everything the characters are going through regarding motherhood.

This being said, I thought the mystery was good, and I liked how the media played into it and how the characters involved themselves into the investigation. It was just a fun page-turner, and the short chapters made it really easy to forget to put the book down, as I continuously wanted to read just a chapter more. It’s one of these stories where the characters take series of bad decisions and get involved when they should be staying home, but that’s what made the story interesting.

The ending, for me, didn’t completely work. While I liked the “who” and “why”, the way it resolved itself felt a bit contrived and rushed.

The Perfect Mother was a flawed but compulsorily readable thriller, and overall I really enjoyed it. It was a quick read that kept me interested all along – and that’s mostly all I want from the books I read!

4 Comments

  1. I can accept flaws if the book is readable. This sounds good to me.

    • I feel the same! 🙂

  2. This is one I abandoned last year after about 2/3rds of the book. I just couldn’t get any further. I saw a lot of Goodreads reviews comparing the writing to Moriarty but I thought that what you said – more mystery and less character development – really made it very unlike Moriarty. I did flip to the back to see if I had the mystery/answer pegged properly, and I enjoyed reading the scene where things are revealed, but mostly I just didn’t click with this one I think.

    • Sorry to hear you didn”t enjoy this one much! I see what you mean though. I’d definitely recommend this book more to a mystery reader than a fan of Moriarty, even though some of the themes and characters are similar.

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