A story of secrets and deception.
A photograph of 'The Mothers' by Sarah J Naughton.
'Five women. Five Secrets. One missing husband.'
They meet at their NCT Group. The only thing they have in common is they're all pregnant. Three years later, they're all good friends. Aren't they? He's disappeared with a life-changing amount of money. Now the police have come knocking. Someone knows something. And the trouble with secrets is that someone always tells.
So, my first completed book of 2021 and hopefully the first of lots more to come! 'The Mothers' by Sarah J Naughton was really a read of two halves for me. It's fair to say that it was a bit of a slow starter with not much action taking place in the first 150 or so pages and took me quite a while to settle in and get to grips with all the key characters. With that being said, I found the second half much more gripping and I was left completely shocked by lots of the final twists and turns that were thrown in at the end.
Without saying too much (for fear of spoilers) the ending, I found was quite bittersweet as though it came as a shock, it was the kind of plot twist you kick yourself for as you really should've seen it coming! I also thought the dynamic between the five women was quite well explored as it showed both the strengths and strains within such an unlikely group of friends.
There were times when I found the constant jumping between different periods of time quite confusing especially as it was also told in the perspectives of all five women as well as the detective inspector. Although this did allow me to get a varied viewpoint of the plot and understand each of the characters better, it may have been a bit more straightforward to either have the book told from one singular perspective or in chronological order as when both conventions were put together it did become a bit confusing.
Nevertheless, I did really enjoy the book and it was a good book to be one of my first 2021 reads. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good mystery and overall I would give it 3/5 stars.