Review: Things You’ve Inherited From Your Mother by Hollie Adams

After Carrie's mother passes away from ovarian cancer, she grieves in her own way.  She shows up to the funeral wearing fishnet tights and a leather skirt. She aggressively rebels against new rules at her place of work.  She tries desperately to rid herself of the overweight cat she's inherited from her mother. Essentially, she chooses to avoid confronting the issue, instead displacing her hurt and anger on others.

Fervently against self-help books, she instead decides to write one of her own.  Tracing the days following her mother's death, she uses "Choose Your Own Adventure" style stories to relay her path to recovery, not before hitting bottom.

When I read the synopsis of this title, I thought this would be an interesting title to read and review following Mother’s Day.  The title grabbed my attention and I hoped to experience a characters examination of her relationship with her mother as she attempted to grieve and recover from her death. So….that didn’t happen.

While I understood the attempt the author was making in using dry, sarcastic humor to relay the experiences Carrie was feeling after losing her mother, the attempt was lost on me. Carrie’s character was deplorable.  Honestly, there isn’t anything you could like about this woman. She lies to those around her to protect herself, she pushes away those who care about her.  Had the novel been any longer (at just over 150 pages I read it in an hour), I would have thrown it across the room, refusing to waste any more time.   While it’s not necessary for me to approve of or like a main character, there must be some redeeming aspect of them for me to hold on to. In Carrie’s case? Not so much.

Perhaps if the author had added to the novel, going into more detail on the “aha” moment that woke Carrie up from the sarcastic and self-deprecating fog she was shrouded in. Spending so much time on the negative, limiting just a page at the end to the positive, doesn’t compel me as a reader to become invested in this character, much less this novel, at all.

I understand that all people deal with grief differently. It’s never pretty, yet if you want a reader to dedicate time to embrace your novel, you have to give them a little something to keep them going.

Bottom line: While I appreciate the author’s attempt to use humor to relay Carrie’s pain and grief, the execution of this period of mourning and recovery was completely lost on me.

I accepted this book for review as part of a tour hosted by TLC Book Tours.  Check out the other reviews, maybe the effort was lost solely on me.