Idgie Says:Is this not every woman's nightmare - losing a child? Then to compound that guilt, have it not be your own child but another's that was entrusted to your care? A child abducted and you have no idea if they're dead, alive, tortured, or in a living hell. I shuddered just reading the book description.
I will be honest, I had a hard time reading this novel - it was very close to my heart, given the subject matter. Then throw in a mother who's busy, exhausted, scattered in thought and sometimes doesn't necessarily tune in to what the children are saying to her and you have a glimmer of recognition smacking you in the face also.
The descriptive scenes with the stalker of the young girls made me tense up so much my muscles are sore. I was cringing repeatedly throughout the book.
But then there's a wild twist or two in the book that takes you away from the horror of the child snatcher and sends you into another spiral of distress and horror.
You soon learn that you really don't know your friends and neighbors as well as you might think.
__________________________________________________________________________
Just What Kind of Mother Are You?
Author: Paula Daly
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Publication Date: September 3, 2013
Book Description:
Lisa Kallisto—overwhelmed working mother—is the not-so-perfect model of the modern woman. She holds down a busy job running an animal shelter, she cares for three demanding children, and she worries that her marriage isn’t getting enough attention. During an impossibly hectic week, Lisa takes her eye off the ball for a moment and her world descends into a living nightmare. Not only is her best friend’s thirteen-year-old daughter missing, but it’s Lisa’s fault. To make matters worse, Lucinda is the second teenage girl to disappear within the past two weeks. The first one turned up stripped bare and abandoned on the main street after a horrible ordeal. Wracked with guilt over her mistake, and after having been publicly blamed by Lucinda’s family, Lisa sets out to right the wrong. As she begins digging under the surface, Lisa learns that everything is not quite what it first appears to be.
In Paula Daly’s heart-stopping debut novel, motherhood, marriage, and friendship are tested when a string of abductions tear through a small-town community. Gripping and fast-paced, Just What Kind of Mother Are You? introduces an outstanding new thriller writer with a terrifying imagination for the horrors that lurk in everyday lives.