The Mothers by Sarah J. Naughton
Genre: Psychological thriller, Suspense, Mystery, Contemporary
Read: 1st September 2020
Published: 30th April 2020
★★★★★ 4.5 stars (rounded up)
DESCRIPTION:
Five Women.
Bella, Electra, Skye, Chrissy and Jen met at an NCT class three years ago. The only thing they had in common was their pregnancy. Now they’re all good friends. Aren’t they?
Five Secrets.
Three years later, they are all good friends. Aren't they?
One Missing Husband.
Now the police have come knocking. Someone knows something.
And the trouble with secrets is that someone always tells....
MY REVIEW:
If real life hadn't gotten in the way, I would have devoured THE MOTHERS is one sitting! It is brilliant, compelling and so completely addictive with a twist that just deliciously clever. My first read by Sarah J. Naughton had me turning the pages though my eyelids were drooping on 2 hours sleep. A totally unexpected well twisted and ingenious read, THE MOTHERS has an easy reading style that draws you in from the first page.
Five women from different walks of life, who would probably never normally cross paths, meet at an antenatal group and become friends. Beyond their birth of their babies, the women form their own informal "mothers group" where they get to unwind for a few hours in each others company and not be judged.
But life is about to get a little more complicated for them and bring the women closer in a way they never would have imagined.
Bella gave up work to become a stay at home mum but since Teddy's birth feels that her husband Ewan no longer sees her in the same way. She's middle-aged, frumpy and putting on weight where she was once a slim and beautiful. Not only that, Bella suffered post partum psychosis which had her delusional and erratic. Does Ewan see her differently since then? Because he certainly doesn't seem to want her now. In an attempt to boost her self esteem, Bella gets herself a job in a department store where she thrives and enjoys every moment...particularly coming home to Teddy's face lighting up when she walks in the door. But life with Ewan is difficult. He's moody, secretive and snappy. Is he having an affair? Or is it porn he's looking at when he locks himself in his study every night for hours on end?
And then Bella's world begins to fall apart when she starts to see things again. Blood in an uncracked egg. A tiger stalking towards her. A butterfly wing. Spiders in her pockets. And when she sees Ewan defaced in their wedding photo she wonders...did she do that? And forgot about it? Is she getting ill again?
Chrissy is a successful divorce lawyer living in the affluent area of Chelsea. She is married to Russell and they have beautiful baby Chloe. But Chrissy is unhappy and restless. Her job may be lucrative but it is also unfulfilling with selfish wives demanding more than they need to survive divorce.
Then she meets Atanis, the builder working on their new basement extension, and with him she feels she can be herself with no judgement. Russell is away or at the pub so often their clandestine meetings go undiscovered and although she knows it is not forever, Chrissy dreads the day when she must bid him goodbye.
Electra is mother to twins Pearl and Ozzy, whose conception came as something of a surprise to her and her younger boyfriend Zack. Living in a basement flat, she struggles daily with Ozzy who is so far removed from his placid sister. One day at the supermarket, Ozzy laid himself down in front of the pram and refused to budge...even with customers tutting and trying to get past. Electra was beside herself with frustration and embarrassment but no amount of pleading or cajoling would budge Ozzy. When she moved him herself and plonked him into the pram, strapping him in, she was then accused by an onlooker of kicking him.
Days later, a social worker was on their doorstep outlining an incident had come to their attention where her children's safety was no in question. But it was Bella who made a suggestion as to a possible reason for Ozzy's behaviour which made Electra delve further for more information.
Skye has tattoos, her hair in dreadlocks and lives aboard a boat on the river with her baby daughter Juniper. The love of her life, Pedro, as well as being Juniper's father, is gay and has met the man of his dreams, Felippe. The two of them adore Juniper so much that they want to share that love with a child of their own and give Juniper a sibling. And they want Skye to carry the child.
And then there is Jen, the youngest and most spirited of the women. She has the saddest tale to tell. While their pregnancies brought them together and their babies unite them as mothers, Jen has no child. All her babies have been stillborn. It seems both her and her boyfriend Eliot carry a gene that will deform their child so horribly that if they survived birth they would not live very long afterwards.
Each woman has their own story. Their own demons. Their own secrets. But together they are one.
Then one night each of the women get a call from the other in what sets of a chain of events. Bella awoke from a drunken night with her friends to the most horrific discovery. And she knows she is responsible...
Enter DI Iona Chatwin and her partner Yannis who are tasked with the disappearance of Ewan Upton. The pair question Bella and then each of the women in turn...until they discover Jen is also missing. Have the two high-tailed it together? But when they discover blood in Jen's flat with her phone still on the table and some broken crockery, Iona begins to suspect foul play. And how is it connected to Ewan's disappearance?
THE MOTHERS has a touch of drama, a hint of contemporary fiction and a load of mystery with secrets, thrills and twists in abundance.
Told in dual timelines, playing out from three years earlier and the present day, THE MOTHERS then shifts the story to "before" and "after"...an event which binds the women and is at the heart of this well written story. We hear from each of the women as their stories unfold as well as from Iona, the detective investigating Ewan's disappearance.
I loved each of the women for their uniqueness of characters. All of them had secrets and hidden insecurities which made them vulnerable and bound the story tighter. I did not, however, love Ewan. He was a despicable and completely unlikeable character. He treated his wife first with indifference and then open beligerance and pure nastiness. Even doing so in front of Jen, who was their childminder while Bella was at work, smirking as if it were a joke. He was a hypocrite, a narcissist and a downright horrible person. I thought Bella was well shot of him and hoped he never came back.
I did like Iona but felt that she wasn't as believable as the other characters in the story. She appeared to lack the confidence a Detective Inspector would surely have and had no clue on what to make of each of the women. She didn't seem to figure anything out and spent most of her time mooning about a colleague, despairing the fact that she would be straight and not in her league. I felt that too much was made of the fact Iona was gay especially as she mooned over the abovementioned colleague constantly. It should have been more important that she was the police detective tasked with the investigation at hand, not the fact that she is gay. But then I had to ask myself why was she written as gay when there were an overt number of gay characters added to the story - five in total. While their sexuality did appear to have their own unique parts to play in the story, only Iona and the last one, which I felt was merely added for the sake of it, I felt didn't really need to be written as gay. In fact, I think Iona would have been a far stronger character and better detective if she wasn't.
Aside from that, though, all the other characters were complex with nice juicy stories to easily absorb oneself into the intricate web Ms Naughton weaved. Although I did work out the "who" of the mystery, it wasn't until it was being played out that the "how" and "why" became apparent. Intricately brilliant and cleverly woven, THE MOTHERS is most certainly one of those "just one more chapter" books that keep your reading into the night!
I thoroughly recommend this book to fans of a good well-written psychological domestic thriller with a difference!
I would like to thank #SarahJNaughton, #NetGalley and #Trapeze for an ARC of #TheMothers in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Sarah Naughton was born in 1975 and grew up in Dorset. She studied English Literature at UCL and has been in London ever since, spending ten years as a copywriter in an advertising agency before her first book was published in 2013. A supernatural thriller for teens, The Hanged Man Rises (Simon and Schuster) was shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards. A second thriller for teens, The Blood List (Simon and Schuster) ame out the following year, after which Sarah moved onto psychological thrillers for adults. Tattletale was followed by Amazon bestseller, The Other Couple, and The Mothers was published in April 2020. She also writes ghost stories.
Sarah lives in London with her husband and two sons.
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