A review by kindledspiritsbooks
The Other's Gold by Elizabeth Ames

3.0

I’d been meaning to read this one for along time but unfortunately it left me a little cold. The Other’s Gold by Elizabeth Ames tells the story of four friends, Alice, Ji Sun, Margaret and Lainey, who meet in college and become lifelong friends. The novel follows them through college, early adulthood, marriage and motherhood. The narrative of the novel is centred around the worst mistakes that each of the women makes over the course of their lives. For Alice; an accident in her childhood, for Ji Sun; an accusation she makes while at university, for Margaret; a disturbing kiss and for Lainey; a bite from seemingly out of the blue. My main issue with this book is it raised a lot of very serious issues (childhood sexual abuse, postpartum mental illness and infidelity among others) but the author didn’t seem to know what to do with this issues once they’d been raised. I felt the novel stopped in a weird place and left a lot of unresolved issues and questions for the reader. Perhaps this was intentional on the author’s part, but I would have liked a bit more resolution and clarity to this story, particularly regarding Margaret’s ‘mistake’. And without spoiling anything, I would seriously contest the assertion that Ji Sun's worst mistake was the accusation while she was in college!