The Bottom Line: A truly stunning crime novel that is emotionally charged, challenging and filled with unexpected twists.
MotherLove opens in St Croix as an assassin in a wetsuit sneaks aboard a yacht, executes a human trafficker and rescues several young Haitian girls. Two days later, in New Jersey, 35-year-old Rebecca Winslow wakes in a frigid guestroom. Rebecca is grieving the loss of a child, multiple miscarriages, the disappearance of her sister, Natalie, a lack of closeness with her mother, diminishing sexual appetite, and perhaps most of all, her continued marriage to a man she loves and loathes.
But a spark of hope comes, strangely enough, in the form of a grim headline: “Woman’s Body Washed Ashore in St. Croix.” It seems the woman is alive, albeit in a coma, and is roughly Natalie’s age. Rebecca can’t deny the feeling that the woman is her sister. In a snap decision made only on a hunch, she decides to go see for herself.
Rebecca soon discovers that Natalie is alive, and also suspected of murdering the trafficker killed in the book’s prologue. Soon, Rebecca’s preoccupation with her own pain begins to gradually shift. In a moment that readers may later find ironic, she forgives her sister, and becomes determined to rescue Natalie from whatever forces have put her in this vulnerable situation.
It’s impossible to underestimate how meticulously author Hope Andersen builds to this moment. When Andersen isn’t telling Rebecca’s story, she’s creating suspense in smoldering chapters featuring a seemingly less-than-honorable St. Croix police chief. But the chapters featuring Rebecca’s point of view are filled with a palpable sense of hopelessness and despair. The need for atonement and salvation is urgent, even as the reasons often come from a person who has become exceptionally sensitive not only to major trauma, but also to the ordinary human condition. So immersive is Rebecca’s mental anguish that seemingly kind gestures – such as when her husband books her a trip to St. Croix and a stay at one of the nicest hotels on the island – are (perhaps rightly) met with dark suspicion.
Andersen adds a layer of additional intrigue when Rebecca meets singer and fast friend Monique LaFleur. Even while enjoying the new friendship, it’s hard for Rebecca to escape Royce’s shadow (“What will Royce say if he finds out she is staying in a house with two lesbians?”), but the relationship proves to be a catalyst for change. The renewed confidence comes just in time, as Rebecca – and rapt readers – are about to experience a series of jaw-dropping twists that they won’t see coming.
