By Carly Smith
Content warning: death
Barbara Abel’s Mother’s Instinct is a dark, twisted novel about two families intertwined both geographically and through friendships. Sylvain and Tiphaine are a successful couple—he an architect and she once a pharmacist—who have a fun-loving, energetic son named Maxime. Best friend to Maxime is Milo, the next door neighbour and son of Laetitia and David. Not only are the children friends, so too are the parents. One day tragedy strikes, and Maxime dies. This marks the beginning of the end of the neighbours’ friendship, as well as the beginning of more upsets. Are these unfortunate events all accidents? Laetitia believes not, and in the process of trying to convince others that there is a guilty party to these horrible events, she drives herself into a constant state of panic and anxiety, all while ruining trust and partnership with her husband.
There are four main characters in the book: Laetitia, David, Tiphaine, and Sylvain. At first, Laetitia is a supportive wife, friend, and mother who is occasionally easily frustrated. As events unfold she grows fearful, hotheaded, and closed-minded. David, having had a rough youth, has cooled down and is often quite level headed. He is an excellent partner to Laetitia in that he is the calm to her storm. Tiphaine is hard to read; sometimes in her dialogue she is blunt and somewhat insensitive, while other times she is warm and approachable. Like David, Sylvain typically keeps situations balanced. With a dark secret from his past eating away at him, he is perhaps a bit on guard and slightly tense.
Mother’s Instinct is fairly predictable; a thriller with not too many twists and turns, but enough to keep readers on edge. After having read the book in its entirety, I thought of some hints that could have been more subtle or buried in other, more trivial details to make the ending less guessable. It should be noted that this book is translated from French and while overall the translation is excellent, here and there a word or sentence was not the most suitable choice. Sometimes the translation was too formal, other times too colloquial, and other times not in keeping with the tone of the paragraph or conversation. This is perhaps why I had a hard time building the characters’ personalities. The translation, however, did not take away from the enjoyment of the book and was mostly spot on.
Overall, Mother’s Instinct was an easy read that held my interest and had me wondering at points if I made the correct predictions about the ending. I recommend it to new readers in the thriller genre, adults looking for a quick weekend or beach read, or people looking to take a break from a light-hearted, happily-ever-after novel.