Mother Dearest
- Author: Clare Bird
- Page count: 320
- Started on: 2026/08/26
- Finished on: 2026/08/28
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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Thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur Books, who provided an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.
After The Correspondent, this is the second epistolary novel I’ve read this year. Is there a 2026 trend that I don’t know about? 🤔 Mother Dearest is told primarily through letters from Imogene, in her mid-20s, to her controlling mother whose home she just left after an argument.
Imogene moves in with her aunt and starts building her own life, based on the deeply warped rules and expectations she’s learned from her mother. She finds the “perfect man”, cozies up to him, removes his wife and daughter from the equation, and recounts it all in detail in frequent letters to her mother.
It’s interesting to read Imogene’s explanations of her behavior and choices and her surprise at ordinary life outside the overbearing home she grew up in. The prose is easy to read and the epistolary format works well here. The plot is a bit too predictable for my taste, but it rolls along nicely. The final letter, from Imogene’s long-lost brother to their long-gone father, was a nice touch to wrap the story up.
