A review by jesssalexander
A Good Enough Mother by Bev Thomas

2.0

This book is heavy handed with ominous foreshadowing and heavy foreboding. Par for the course with a thriller I suppose, but it carried the plot a bit more than necessary. I had a lot of feelings about Ruth, most of which ran along the lines of screaming WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING about her every decision. Bev Thomas is a psychologist herself and the patient-therapist dialogues were super interesting and definetly felt authentic. The protagonist, Ruth is a renowned psychotherapist dealing with trauma victims and also a mother of twins, now fully grown. She spends the entirety of her kids' childhood coddling the boy and basically forgetting her daughter exists (and her husband for that matter). By the time they reach adulthood, the daughter is self-sufficient and distant and the son runs away. (Ruth was NOT a good enough mother). The story begins when Ruth- now separated from her husband- gets a new patient who happens to bear a startling resemblance to her son who's been missing for a year and a half. Despite her training and her best judgement, Ruth makes a series of really horrible decisions that lead to more horribleness. The whole book is kind of a huge downer actually. I think Bev Thomas was too kind to Ruth in the end, maybe being a psychologist herself she wanted to be gentle. Maybe I'm spiteful but I think the ending would have been more satisfying if she'd had her license stripped rather than voluntarily stepped out of the field. Everyone was far too sympathetic! And the bit with the letter from Alaska in the end??? Is this a Disney movie or a suspense novel?