Book Stats
- Format: audiobook
- Length: 9 hours and 37 minutes
- Chapters: 66 Chapters (68 with the prologue and epilogue)
- Narrator POV: 1st person; alternating between characters
Love, Mom is a psychological thriller that took social media by storm this year. It has been on every “top reads” or “must-reads” list I’ve seen in the last 3 months. I added it to my TBR and finally got around to reading it, and I’m sorry it took so long! I can see how it made so many lists this year! I cannot, however, understand the hate it’s receiving on Goodreads and Reddit! It’s definitely making my top 10 list this year. Maybe I’m just easy to please?
Love, Mom follows the story of Mackenzie Casper, daughter of a best-selling author who writes under the pen name E.V. Renge. When her mom dies unexpectedly and under potentially suspicious circumstances, Mackenzie begins receiving letters from an anonymous source that turn her whole life upside down.
Coming directly from mom herself, these letters contain information from the life her mother lived that Mackenzie knew nothing about. She starts investigating the information and claims made in these letters, revealing secrets that some would pay to keep quiet and others would fight to let loose.
There were more than a few plot twists, and while I tried, I couldn’t guess all of them. My jaw was on the floor more than once, and I summed it up in my book journal as “WTF”. Though romance between the two main characters is not a main plot point at all, I couldn’t help but spend time waiting for them to get together and hoping they would.
The book ties everything together nicely in the end and, in my opinion, provides a satisfying conclusion. I thoroughly enjoyed the narration. The character Grunger was narrated so well that I hated him! I mean, I wouldn’t have liked him anyway, but the narration was just so perfect and captured his smarmy attitude to the point where I thought I might vomit at how disgusting a person he is. I will definitely be giving these narrators another listen in the future!
I would say this story is medium/fast-paced, and the characters feel well developed in my opinion. Xander’s writing style was easy to follow but didn’t feel… childish? Does that make sense? Definitely not YA, but not so over the top that you need a PhD to understand it, and it was not tedious to read.
Do I recommend it? Yes. I do and I have! I have recommended it to my bestie, my mom, and my sister. Those are really the only people I’ve seen since I finished it but I intend to work it into many conversations.
If it’s on your list, give it a chance!
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