Author: Ashley Audrain
# of Pages: 307 (hardback)
Genre: Adult, Mystery, Thriller, Contemporary
Rating: ★★★★☆
Synopsis: Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had. But in the thick of motherhood’s exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter–she doesn’t behave like most children do. Or is it all in Blythe’s head? Her husband, Fox, says she’s imagining things. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well. Then their son Sam is born–and with him, Blythe has the blissful connection she’d always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fall-out forces Blythe to face the truth.
Review: I knew very little going into this book other than vaguely knowing it was somehow related to motherhood.
The narration is in first person and starts from the end before bouncing between multiple generations of history to peel the onion on Blythe's family's story. It took me a while to figure out what was going on (I didn't even know whether the protagonist was a woman or not, whether the main source of conflict would be with her past or her present or something else entirely).
After the first ~80 pages though, I became hooked and started to the feel the mystery/thriller aspects more strongly. It's more of a thriller in a realistic sense rather than in a way that is amped up to try to scare the reader. The protagonist will notice something is not quite what she expected with her daughter, and the reader feels the same worry, fear, and repulsion that Blythe feels.
The Push was not without its failings though - the narration is very disjoint jumping between the grandmother's generation, Blythe's childhood, and even between parts of the present. The sloppy narration may have been on purpose to make the reader question Blythe's narration, but it broke my flow while reading and "spoiled" outcomes later in the book as a cheap and frustrating way to make the reader want to know how something happened.
Also, although it's a smaller part of the book, this is another example where the protagonist wants to do something related to writing as her profession. This always screams unoriginality and hints at the author's inability to create characters that are different from the industry they are familiar with.
Audrain did a great job making motherhood seem really horrible. It draws on a real nightmare scenario that all parents fear that they'll create a monster via their children. I could see this being a great required reading for aspiring mothers to test how strongly the actually want to have kids.
Otherwise, I sped through this book (a few days where most of the book was read in 1), and my mind kept wanting to know more details about Blythe and her family. I was wavering between 3 and 4 stars, but leaned toward 4 stars just because of how easy it was to read. However, I'm not in a hurry to recommend it - the story is interesting but the execution could have been cleaner. I'd be excited to see Audrain's future works since she came up with a great concept for a debut novel.