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A review by megansmith
Things I Wish I Told My Mother by Susan DiLallo, Susan Patterson, James Patterson
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
I have so many gripes with this book, so this may be long. but I want to start with setting a scene - about a year ago, my mom invited me to a book speaking session at a nearby university, featuring Susan and James Patterson. I was excited to go, not that I read either of their work currently, but I used to read the Maximum Ride books as a kid and thought it'd be a cool talk to go to. And it was. But I could NOT get over how much James talked over Susan Patterson, his own wife. It was a book talk about THIS book and their lives in general, and despite him getting credit in the front cover for mostly just bringing tea and sandwiches to the two Susans who wrote this book together, he talked by far the most out of the two of them. I thought, hey, isn't this your wife's book? About HER mother/daughter experience? Shouldn't you let HER talk?
That is the feeling I had reading this book. Something about it reeked of the writing style of James Patterson and it has soured on me over the years. Chapters are painfully short, with almost each one ending in a manufactured cliffhanger. And in between chapter starts and ends, truly not much of anything happens. The writing style is bland, predictive, and I quite literally saw phrases and sentences repeat over each other in different chapters when they already weren't groundbreaking the first time I read them. I knew I was cooked when at one point the book says "I felt hungry. "I'm hungry," I said." and then they go to a restaurant. Most of the book just felt so bland and forced fed, I didn't feel like I had a magical journey, I had an odd afternoon out in the suburbs of my midwest hometown. It felt documentarian but with zero point because nothing of note was being documented.
Also, these characters - I did NOT like either of them. Call me a graphic designer that's also a hater, but the main character Laurie got on my NERVES and nothing about that surprised me considering she's a creative director. And I could tell she was a bad one considering she has zero foresight, planning skills, and rational thinking. My distaste of her was pretty quick in the beginning but then add in her line about being a creative director and "fielding and ignoring all the feedback for why the designers chose this direction" or something along those lines sent me into a blind fucking rage. She's incredibly whiny and selfish throughout the whole book, when a majority of her problems are her own fault. If you didn't know she had a previous marriage, one would assume she's a teenager by the way she talks, complains, and acts. Also, the mom! Whaaat the hell man, you two sound like you need to cut contact. I mean.... I know technically they do in the end but, still . The amount of eating disorder content I was inhaling in this book felt like it might crawl out of the page and give me Weight Watchers Oprah ads from the 2000's and yell at me about drinking 2% milk as a teenager. If you have any sort of triggers with an eating disorder, you should skip this. But the mom was also equally as heartless and the whole point of the book being like "yeah...that's just how she was. and that's okay. That's all she could do." ?? Seriously? They were both so horrible to each other throughout this book that it drive me up a wall. Laurie, stop canceling on dinner every night with your mom after she just started the book having a HEART ATTACK. and Dr Liz, you need to go to therapy for all your eating disorder bullshit you've internalized, especially as a gynecologist. That's really concerning honestly that you pride yourself on being a gynecologist and you have such harmful body image views. And these two have a whole host of other issues they need to work out that frankly could be better served just..not interacting, ever. But the whole book was them in the longest fucking argument with the tiniest sliver of kind words and it made me want to tear my eyeballs out. If you like dysfunctional family literature that explores family dynamics in a deep way, this is frankly not it. It was flat and terrible and I learned nothing from this.
Also, okay Bougee Cosmetics? Yall couldn't come up with a SINGLE other name for a fake cosmetics company? That was in the first of the many short chapters and I was quickly over it when I saw this name come up.
Lastly, the ending. Really, it was fake the whole time? That's all you could come up with? It felt so cheap and pulled out of a really bad mystery novel, not what's supposed to be a heartwarming tale between mother and daughter. What I got out of this is, hey don't worry, your toxic mom means well and you just have to accept her for who she is and learn from that and it'll be okay when you're like 40 and have a son. .
Overall, this was...rough. I read this because my mom gave it to me, having attended this talk together and she liked the book and gave it to me so I could read it. And I am glad I have finally fulfilled that commitment. I think if you like the premise of this, One Italian Summer by Rebecca Searle does it far better, even if it's not my favorite it covers this whole theme of what the book WANTED you to learn "tell your mom you love her before she dies" far better than this one.
That is the feeling I had reading this book. Something about it reeked of the writing style of James Patterson and it has soured on me over the years. Chapters are painfully short, with almost each one ending in a manufactured cliffhanger. And in between chapter starts and ends, truly not much of anything happens. The writing style is bland, predictive, and I quite literally saw phrases and sentences repeat over each other in different chapters when they already weren't groundbreaking the first time I read them. I knew I was cooked when at one point the book says "I felt hungry. "I'm hungry," I said." and then they go to a restaurant. Most of the book just felt so bland and forced fed, I didn't feel like I had a magical journey, I had an odd afternoon out in the suburbs of my midwest hometown. It felt documentarian but with zero point because nothing of note was being documented.
Also, these characters - I did NOT like either of them. Call me a graphic designer that's also a hater, but the main character Laurie got on my NERVES and nothing about that surprised me considering she's a creative director. And I could tell she was a bad one considering she has zero foresight, planning skills, and rational thinking. My distaste of her was pretty quick in the beginning but then add in her line about being a creative director and "fielding and ignoring all the feedback for why the designers chose this direction" or something along those lines sent me into a blind fucking rage. She's incredibly whiny and selfish throughout the whole book, when a majority of her problems are her own fault. If you didn't know she had a previous marriage, one would assume she's a teenager by the way she talks, complains, and acts. Also, the mom! Whaaat the hell man, you two sound like you need to cut contact. I mean....
Also, okay Bougee Cosmetics? Yall couldn't come up with a SINGLE other name for a fake cosmetics company? That was in the first of the many short chapters and I was quickly over it when I saw this name come up.
Lastly, the ending.
Overall, this was...rough. I read this because my mom gave it to me, having attended this talk together and she liked the book and gave it to me so I could read it. And I am glad I have finally fulfilled that commitment. I think if you like the premise of this, One Italian Summer by Rebecca Searle does it far better, even if it's not my favorite it covers this whole theme of what the book WANTED you to learn "tell your mom you love her before she dies" far better than this one.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Eating disorder