Ex-journalist Tash has been searching for a story to launch her freelance career. But she has also been searching for something else: new friends to help her navigate motherhood.
She sees them at her son's new playgroup. The other mothers. The sleek, the sophisticated, the successful mothers. The women she wants to be.
And then one day they welcome her into their circle and Tash discovers the kind of life she has always dreamt of; their elegant London townhouses a far cry from her cramped basement flat and endless bills.
They seem to have everything. But they also have their secrets.
And it's soon clear that not everyone at the playgroup can be trusted.
Comment: This is another book I brought from the library. Since I don't usually read many thrillers I confess I had not heard about this author before, but I have now seen many friends have actually enjoyed her debut, one I'll try as well if it ever becomes available.
Natasha James is a freelance reporter whose son just entered preschool and she is unsure of how to help him with the recent changes in their lives. One day, another mother gives her a hint about something and that is all she needed to become part of what seems to be an exclusive group, even though she and husband don't have the same financial possibilities. It is also convenient since she is investigating the death of a nanny and she finds out that nanny used to work for one of the mothers in her group... however, the more Tash investigates, the more secretive some details seem to become. What are these people hiding? What really happened to the nanny?
At first, I thought this would be a simple suspense story but it turns out it's also a little a social criticism of how some upper classes behave and how that includes the world of preschoolers and babies. I mean, I had read books with the subject before and it's not a hard guess to know where the goal of the novel would go, but I surprised myself by enjoying this a lot more than I anticipated. For that contributed the author's style, which is easy and fluid and always seems fast paced.
The story is mostly told by Tash, but we also have alternated chapters throughout the book by Sophie, the nanny who died, from when she started working as a nanny to the moment before her death, meaning as we follow the plot, we have events in descending order about Sophie, and when Tash faces the final truth, that is when we learn what Sophie really went through in her final moments. This adds to the tension and drama, so that things end up in a strong peak.
The reporting Tash does seems competent enough since she is freelancer. I've found this aspect of things to be very nerve wracking, plus with motherhood and money issues makes Tash very vulnerable to stress and peer pressure, which is why she starts behaving as she does the longer she deals with the other mothers. This was interesting and realistic on its own, but part of me was always hopeful that Tash would prove her own worth and self respect in other ways, although it is made to seem that being part of the group is a way for her to get closer to the others and learn their secrets.
I also suppose the author wanted to add drama and suspense by making the reader fearful for Tash. Some red herrings and where they lead her to investigate were quite well done, but I will be very honest and say I wish Tash had risen above, had been more a knight in search for truth without compromising her values and this was deliberately misleading, so that the reader can't be certain Tash is morally commendable. I don't think grey morals are bad, but in this situation, I'd have preferred Tash and her sphere of life to be without doubts or censure.
Of course, all characters are misleading and untrustworthy, so that the suspense is ongoing until the end. For this, the author used a tactic in which, sometimes, the characters would do/think something in a scene, then we would be given the sense a certain choice had been made and, later on, we learn the truth is that the choice of action was not as simple. With this tactic, clearly we could never be certain of what characters were actually doing, and they were intentionally presented as hiding something. Sometimes, this technique annoyed me, I admit, because it felt everyone was unreliable.
When things get to the end, there are two or three twists which are meant to be shocking, a lot more so than the small details we are given throughout the novel, as established things turned out to be not that obvious. I think the identity of Sophie's murderer and the reasons why the crime was committed were interesting elements and add up to the big scheme of things. I can't help thinking, though, that the whole thing would have been easier to discover if Tash had had other resources to investigate...
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