The Good Mother by A L Bird

About this book..

The greatest bond. The darkest betrayal.

Susan wakes up alone in a room she doesn’t recognise, with no memory of how she got there. She only knows that she is trapped, and her daughter is missing.

The relief that engulfs her when she hears her daughter’s voice through the wall is quickly replaced by fear.

The person who has imprisoned her has her daughter, too.

Devising a plan to keep her daughter safe, Susan begins to get closer to her unknown captor. And suddenly, she realises that she has met him before.

 

My review..

This is one of those books that you will pick up….and then not put down again until you are finished and it very much needs to be that way because of the way it is written. The reason for that I will come to that later!

Susan comes to in a locked room. She struggles to understand why. Her captor brings her food and takes her to the bathroom. He looks familiar but she can’t seem to remember why. The only thing that keeps her going with thoughts of escape is the fact that the kidnapper has also taken her daughter Cara. A grill between their rooms means they can communicate via knocks and notes to work out their plan of attack. They just need to wait for the right moment….

Well, this was one of the most interestingly original ideas I had seen committed to print in quite a while. To begin with I found it rather confusing but once I realised this was how the author needed to tell her story, I settled down to read it and read it I did in just a day. I’ve seen others say this too about this book and think that because of the way it is told you do need to read in large chunks to keep it fresh in your mind. Sorry if that sounds confusing but you will see what I mean when you read it! Every part of the plot is told from Susan’s viewpoint or by her captor. Once you find out what is going on, the story that has been told makes much more sense-I had a clue where it was going and I was nearly totally right but not quite! This seems to be the norm for books of this genre this year, to be touted with a big twist, and I’d rather they weren’t! It must be very difficult for authors to keep surprising us when we are told we won’t see twists coming! We expect a twisty plot full of red herrings or unreliable narrators in this type of book nowadays-it’s why we read them!!

I have read a couple of this authors books previously when she was writing under the name of Amy Bird. I’m not sure why she has chosen to use A L Bird on this one as for me I would have been very happy to order on the strength of her previous work (I especially enjoyed Hide and Seek which I downloaded in parts whenever I could find WiFi on my hols a couple of years ago!!). I really enjoyed The Good Mother and found it an easy-to-get-caught-up-in, suspenseful storyline once you got into the way it was written.

I received a copy of this book via netgalley in return for an unbiased review.

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Available to pre-order on Amazon here

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