Madwoman by Chelsea Bieker
on September 3, 2024
Genres: Fiction / Family Life / General, Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
Pages: 336
Format: Audiobook, Hardcover
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Clove has gone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, she’s landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her name) focuses on finding the right supplement, the right gratitude meditation. But when she receives a letter from a women’s prison in California, her past comes screeching into the present, entangling her in a dangerous game with memory and the people she thought she had outrun. As we race between her precarious present-day life in Portland, Oregon and her childhood in a Waikiki high-rise with her mother and father, Clove is forced to finally unravel the defining day of her life. How did she survive that day, and what will it take to end the cycle of violence? Will the truth undo her, or could it ultimately save her?
The writing in the book is strong, giving the reader a real sense of Clove’s trauma and how it affects every choice she makes in life. She’s not an extremely likable character, she makes poor choices and decisions, but even so, she is quite relatable because it is an innate thing as a mother to try to create the best possible outcome for your children. What I didn’t like was that I found all of the twists to be incredibly predictable. And since the story could have been an impactful and moving tale of overcoming domestic abuse, the twists seemed forced and way too convenient to propel the story in a believable way. I wanted to be more surprised than I was. The pacing is also very slow. We know from the beginning that Clove has secrets about her past, but the story of what happened is doled out very slowly and causes the narrative to drag. That said, the ending is good and left me with a positive feeling.
I rated this novel three stars. I’m glad I read this book, but if you’re going to read it realize that it does have some flaws, particularly with pacing. You know what’s going to happen, and you’re not excited about that outcome, but at the same time it’s the only thing that staves off the ever-present itching that would otherwise drive you insane. In other words, it was annoying and predictable, but I enjoyed the process anyway.
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