The Mother in Law by Sally Hepworth @SallyHepworth @StMartinsPress #bookreview #pubday #themotherinlaw

Happy Pub Day to this stellar story!

Excited to share with you today my review for this book I read in December but still sticks with me today! This was a group read and we all absolutely loved it!💕

My Thoughts

Sally Hepworth completely sucked me in with this compulsive engaging addictive story! This book took a hold of me and did not let go until the last page was turned!

This was an intense twisty story full of complex characters and complicated relationships. I absolutely love books that dig deeply into the psychology of the characters, and oh boy did this book do that! Perhaps there is no relationship more tenuous than that of mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. My own mother in law unfortunately passed away a year ago, and I will be forever grateful that she really stayed out of our business, LOL! Someday I will have my own daughter in law, a relationship I am looking forward to because I trust my son’s taste in a significant other. Although I am imagining it will be a tricky relationship I am up for the challenge! What is that saying;”adaughter is a daughter for all of her life, but a son is a son until he takes a wife.”

This story is told from duel points of view, mother-in-law Diana and daughter-in-law Lucy. I felt this was a extremely impactful way to tell the story, you could really see how much misunderstanding there was between these two women. They both truly sought the approval of the other, and neither really knew how to go about it. Most interesting indeed!

The book starts out with the apparent suicide of Diana. As the book progresses we get a look at events leading up to the tragedy. As well as the present day investigation. As things begin to unfold and secrets begin to be revealed we really find out how truly complicated it all was. As the past is revealed Diana becomes a more and more sympathetic character. You truly do need to understand where someone’s coming from to fully appreciate their current actions. I liked Lucy from the very beginning and I enjoyed delving deep into her immediate family dynamics. Her relationship with Oliver and the kids was so relatable. Tom, Diana‘s husband and the father in law was a jovial likable character, who sometimes should’ve perhaps had Diana‘s back a little more! Always much easier to be good cop then bad cop!

This book will feed your appetite for domestic Drama with a glimpse into this family‘s conflict. I just think there is something so alluring about a domestic thriller, it just is always so intriguing to read a story about family dynamics.. What is so brilliant about this story, is this family could be any of ours! It is so familiar and there is something comforting about that, making the story just that much more!

Strongly recommended to anybody who enjoys a story with complicated characters, complex relationships, twists, turns, and a well structured compelling plot!

*** many thanks to St. Martin’s Press for my copy of this book ***

About the Book

A twisty, compelling new book about one woman’s complicated relationship with her mother-in-law that ends in death….
From the moment Lucy met her husband’s mother, she knew she wasn’t the wife Diana had envisioned for her perfect son. Exquisitely polite, friendly, and always generous, Diana nonetheless kept Lucy at arm’s length despite her desperate attempts to win her over. And as a pillar in the community, an advocate for female refugees, and a woman happily married for decades, no one had a bad word to say about Diana…except Lucy.
That was five years ago.
Now, Diana is dead, a suicide note found near her body claiming that she no longer wanted to live because of the cancer wreaking havoc inside her body.
But the autopsy finds no cancer. It does find traces of poison, and evidence of suffocation.
Who could possibly want Diana dead?
Why was her will changed at the 11th hour to disinherit both of her children and their spouses? And what does it mean that Lucy isn’t exactly sad she’s gone?
Fractured relationships and deep family secrets grow more compelling with every chapter in this twisty, captivating new audiobook from Sally Hepworth.

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