About the Book
Ruth Hartland is a psychotherapist with years of experience. But professional skill is no guard against private grief. The mother of grown twins, she is haunted by the fact that her beautiful, difficult, fragile son Tom, a boy who never “fit in,” disappeared a year and a half earlier. She cannot give up hope of finding him, but feels she is living a kind of half-life, waiting for him to return.
Enter a new patient, Dan–unstable and traumatized–who looks exactly like her missing son. She is determined to help him, but soon, her own complicated feelings, about how she has failed her own boy, cloud her professional judgement. And before long, the unthinkable becomes a shattering reality….
An utterly compelling drama with a timebomb at its core, A Good Enough Mother is a brilliant, beautiful story of mothering, and how to let go of the ones we love when we must.
My Review
A Good Enough Mother was a thought-provoking novel, though I will say it wasn’t quite fast-paced enough for me, nor did it grip me like other psychological thrillers have the tendency to do. There is more of a slow build to the climax, and while the ending did have a few intense moments, I never really go that ah-ha moment or that feeling of all the puzzle pieces falling into place. Ruth was a hard character to root for, because it was clear to see so many of errors, her obsession with her new client. Even the flashbacks to when her children were growing up, it was hard to find her a likeable character. I still read until the end because I wanted to understand the point of the story and see how it all would wrap up, but I wasn’t able to love this one.
2.5 stars
