Mother Love

I absolutely adored this book. The characters were so real that it sucked you in and made you feel a part of the story. You didn't want it to end!

Margaret is weighed down by the burden of a secret about her family’s history. Her three children each learn different ways of dealing with her regular flares of anger as they grow to adulthood and forge their own paths.

Caroline, the peace-maker, becomes a wife and mother, gaining eventual contentment and stability with her second husband. Detached and independent, Matthew pursues a successful career in botany, surrounding himself with friends and family on his organic smallholding. Chloe, a skilled violinist, and her mother’s adored favorite, cannot escape Margaret’s cloying influence and struggles to stay afloat as her life spirals into mayhem.

As Margaret’s behavior becomes ever more worrying and bizarre, the dramas that have defined her life become increasingly pronounced. Eventually, she is detained under the Mental Health Act. Her secret is safe, but at what cost?

Mother's Love is a story of a mother who is very disturbed, a paranoid woman in which finally causes her children to become dysfunctional and their mother's mother becomes to unravel each in their own way.
I felt for all the children, the mother's love was one should know.

Thank you, NetGalley for the advance copy to review.

I did not like Margaret at all. She was rude, selfish, and absolutely nuts. Some of the letters she wrote were downright nasty and she sounded like a psycho. I think I would have finished this book sooner if I didn't have to put it down so much because she would make me so mad. There were several times I said to my husband that the book had a character in it that was insufferable. I couldn't stand the way she doted on Chloe like she was the perfect daughter, yet she had absolutely no clue about all the terrible things Chloe was doing. And to make her the sole beneficiary of her will, it didn't surprise me I guess but I am surprised that Caroline and Matthew took it as well as they did. I guess, given how biased Margaret was with her love, it obviously didn't surprise them much.

As much as the book made me angry, I did like it and I'm glad I have the opportunity to review it. I think one of the reasons why Margaret pissed me off so much was because she reminds me so much of my own mother and it brought up memories of my own childhood. Who would have thought that a work of fiction was capable of doing something like that?