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  • A Good Enough Mother

  • A Novel
  • Written by: Bev Thomas
  • Narrated by: Rebecca Lacey
  • Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (11 ratings)

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A Good Enough Mother

Written by: Bev Thomas
Narrated by: Rebecca Lacey
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Publisher's Summary

"Taut, absorbing and psychologically astute, in A Good Enough Mother Bev Thomas combines all the tension of a thriller with the emotional resonance of a powerful family drama." (Paula Hawkins, number one New York Times best-selling author of The Girl on the Train)

"Perfect for fans of The Silent Patient." (Booklist)

A riveting novel that lets us inside the secret world of therapist and patient, where boundaries get crossed, and events spiral out of control....

Ruth Hartland is a psychotherapist with years of experience. But professional skill is no guard against private grief. The mother of grown twins, she is haunted by the fact that her beautiful, difficult, fragile son Tom, a boy who never "fit in", disappeared a year and a half earlier. She cannot give up hope of finding him, but feels she is living a kind of half life, waiting for him to return.

Enter a new patient, Dan - unstable and traumatized - who looks exactly like her missing son. She is determined to help him, but soon her own complicated feelings about how she has failed her own boy cloud her professional judgment. And before long, the unthinkable becomes a shattering reality....

An utterly compelling drama with a time bomb at its core, A Good Enough Mother is a brilliant, beautiful story of mothering and how to let go of the ones we love when we must.

©2019 Bev Thomas (P)2019 Penguin Audio

What the critics say

"A taut, intelligent psychological thriller.... Thomas plots her twists and turns so ingeniously that even veteran suspense readers will be floored.... Thomas joins the ranks of first-rate masters of misdirection who delight in artfully distracting us readers from the terrible truths planted right before our eyes.” (The Washington Post)

A Good Enough Mother is both a heartbreaking story of love and loss and a hopeful meditation on the winding path to healing.” (BookPage)

“[An] exceptional debut.... Thomas melds astute psychological insight with powerful storytelling in this moving thriller.” (Publishers Weekly)

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Slow to Get Going

While the second half of this book is well written and keeps you interested, the first half does not. The story is slow and tedious to unfold. I had to push myself to keep listening. The Freudian style of therapy which the clinic uses where Ruth works is antiquated and does not reflect what is typically used today. Perhaps my work as a clinician impeded my ability to accept some of the treatment and supervision scenarios that were described.The slow start and build up makes it a bit difficult to recommend.

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