Book Review: The Mothers by Sarah J Naughton

Book: The Mothers

Author: Sarah J Naughton

Pages: 288

Read on: Kindle

Read in: 4-5 hours

Plot Summary: Five Women.

They meet at their NCT Group. The only thing they have in common is they're all pregnant.

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.

Things I Liked: 

1. The premise of this book is very interesting. Five mothers, who are part of a Mother's Club that meets up once a month or so to just drink, chat and decompress. One of their husband's goes missing. Each woman has a secret to hide. Very Big Little Lies kind of vibes and there is just something about the dynamics between friends and the secrets they keep for each other, which I find very interesting. 

2. The events in the book are narrated from six different perspectives- the five mothers (Bella- whose husband is the one that is missing, Skye, Chrissy, Jen and Electra) and the police detective investigating the case- Iona. Each of these women is battling their own issues and is facing different struggles, which make the individual chapters quite interesting as well. 

3. The book cover a gamut of issues concerning modern marriages and parenting- disconnect with one's spouse after the birth of a child, feeling overwhelmed with doing the best as a mom and a working professional, change in attitude of peers and bosses at the workplace, intimacy issues with spouse post delivery and so on- which makes this a very relatable read, I guess, for women everywhere. 

4. The characters are, largely, very relatable. We have Bella, whose husband, Ewan is missing, and who is in a fairly loveless marriage and is just trying to find her feet after a severe bout of postpartum depression. Bella struggles with body image issues and low self-confidence in her abilities as a mom as well as returning to the workplace after a three-year break. Her husband is no longer interested in being intimate and she blames herself and her postpartum weight gain on that. 

Then we have Electra, a highly successful editor, who has twins, one on the Autism Spectrum, who is struggling with managing motherhood, a relationship with her much-younger "baby daddy" and her job. 

Chrissy, a highly successful divorce attorney, is struggling to reconnect with her highly insecure husband after the birth of their daughter. 

Skye, a massage therapist, who survived rape as a teenager, is reluctant to form real relationships with heterosexual men, clinging on instead on her openly gay baby daddy. 

Jen, the youngest member of the group, actually lost her baby at childbirth, but she still is part of the Mother's Club and also babysits Bella's son. She desperately wants a baby, but is afraid of passing down her recessive genetic condition to her second child, just like she did to her first stillborn daughter. 

Things I Didn't Like: 

1. The narrative moves a bit awkwardly between present day and what the author labels 'Before' (Bella's husband goes missing), which is actually in 3-4 different time periods. So, the narrative structure is a bit inelegant and unwieldy and that is why I found myself putting the book away and picking it up after a while. I wish there was a better way to organise the narrative. Between 3-4 different 'Befores' and 6 narrators and one 'After' timeline, it got a bit tiresome! 

2. The big twist was kinda obvious, but it didn't stop me from reading the book. So, that's not really a negative. If you pay enough attention to the characters, you'll also guess what could've transpired. 

Rating: 3.75 / 5