Title: A Mother Would Know
Author: Amber Garza
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense
First published: December 13th 2022
Publisher: MIRA
Finished reading: December 10th 2022 
Pages: 320

“Should one wrong move seal our fate?”

*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by Netgalley and MIRA in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***

REVIEW

I had a fantastic first experience with Amber Garza’s writing back in 2020, and I’ve been wanting to read more of her work ever since. I was intrigued by the blurb of A Mother Would Know with the Alzheimer angle and suspicions around the main character’s son, and I’ve been looking forward to read it. I fully expected to have another excellent reading experience, so it was a complete surprise when I ended up having mixed feelings instead. The premise is still fascinating, but there were a couple of things about the execution that just didn’t work for me.

Like I said before, I still like the idea behind this story. It’s always intriguing to have a main character with beginning Alzheimer and/or memory problems, and A Mother Would Know is classic unreliable narrator style this way. The idea of having the main character’s estranged son returning home to care for her, then slowly discovering one dark secret after the other about their past definitely helped build up the suspense. There were also some things I didn’t see coming, and the final part of the story took me partly by surprise. BUT. There were also quite a few things that I wasn’t as happy with.

I think one of my main issues was with the chaotic and disjointed way this plot was put together. It felt like the story didn’t have any proper structure, and there are so many storylines and subplots that are mentioned only to be abandoned and never resolved. On top of this, the plot switches between past and present and even POV without any warning, which can get not only confusing but very frustrating after a while. It also highly disrupted the pace, and made it harder to stay focused on the plot.

I also struggled with the main characters. They are all highly unlikeably, and I honestly couldn’t care less about what was happening to Valerie nor any of the other characters. This only got worse when certain secrets about her past were revealed… And then I’m not even talking about the multiple cheating incidents going on. I also found certain aspects of the plot to be highly unbelievable. I mean, Valerie is supposed to be struggling with her memories, but somehow she is capable of breaking into two different homes AND find evidence? Evidence that the police somehow never even saw, even though it was very obvious? I don’t want to mention more to avoid spoiling the plot, but let’s just say that my eyebrows received quite a workout while reading this story.

Between the chaotic plot and structure, too many unresolved storylines, constant random timeline and POV switches without warning, lack of credibility and unlikeable characters, A Mother Would Know sadly wasn’t as good of a reading experience as I thought it would be.

You can also find me at Goodreads. Twitter. Instagram. Bloglovin’.