I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy from the Publisher. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
The Good Son
by Jacquelyn Mitchard
Published by MIRA on January 18, 2022
Setting: Wisconsin
Genres: Psychological Thrillers
Pages: 344
Format: Audible Audiobook, Audio CD, Hardcover, Kindle, Paperback
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What do you do when the person you love best becomes unrecognizable to you? For Thea Demetriou, the answer is both simple and agonizing: you keep loving him somehow.
Stefan was just seventeen when he went to prison for the drug-fueled murder of his girlfriend, Belinda. Three years later, he’s released to a world that refuses to let him move on. Belinda’s mother, once Thea’s good friend, galvanizes the community to rally against him to protest in her daughter’s memory. The media paints Stefan as a symbol of white privilege and indifferent justice. Neighbors, employers, even some members of Thea's own family turn away.
Meanwhile Thea struggles to understand her son. At times, he is still the sweet boy he has always been; at others, he is a young man tormented by guilt and almost broken by his time in prison. But as his efforts to make amends meet escalating resistance and threats, Thea suspects more forces are at play than just community outrage. And if there is so much she never knew about her own son, what other secrets has she yet to uncover—especially about the night Belinda died?
The Good Son by Jacquelyn Mitchard made me think about motherhood and how our children are always our responsibility.
Will Thea figure out how to help Stefan? Does Stefan even want her help?
Thea
Our point of view comes from Thea. She is a professor of literature, author, wife, and mother. To be exact, Thea is Stefan’s mother. Stefan is the boy that killed his girlfriend while in a drug-induced fit. Thea stands by Stefan, but she has a lot of guilt, which she doesn’t know how to handle. Thea is ashamed of her son, but she also loves him. The way that people treat her is terrible. However, I kind of understand, but disagree with the extent of it.
Things this book made me think about:
How would I react if one of my children killed someone?
Would I still love my child? To this, I am sure that I would.
Would I feel that it was my fault? Are the sins of the child reflections of the parents?
Would I stay in the same house, neighborhood, or town I lived in before the incident?
If the role were reversed, would I forgive the others?
I hope I never have to answer these questions in real life.
Four Stars
My rating for The Good Son by Jacquelyn Mitchard is four stars. The story is compelling and piqued my interest from the beginning, but something was off for me. I did figure out the thriller part of it. But I thought there were a few things that dragged the story on. I do, however, recommend it to all of you psychological suspense readers out there.
Thank you for dropping by! I hope you enjoyed this review of The Good Son by Jacquelyn Mitchard.
Until the next time,
About Jacquelyn Mitchard
Jacquelyn Mitchard is the New York Times bestselling author of 22 novels for adults and teenagers, and the recipient of Great Britain’s Talkabout prize, The Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson awards, and named to the short list for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, was the inaugural selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, with more than 3 million copies in print in 34 languages. It was later adapted into a major feature film starring Michelle Pfeiffer. Her novel Still Summer has also been adapted for a film still in production. She has also an essay collection, The Rest of Us: Dispatches from the Mother Ship, drawn from her newspaper column syndicated by Tribune Media. Mitchard’s essays also have been published in magazines worldwide, widely anthologized, and incorporated into school curricula. She served on the Fiction jury for the 2003 National Book Awards, and was editor-in-chief of Merit Press, a Young Adult imprint under the aegis of Simon and Schuster.
A Chicago native, Mitchard grew up the daughter of a plumber and a hardware store clerk who met as rodeo riders. She is a Distinguished Fellow at the Ragdale Foundation and a DeWitt Clinton Readers Digest Fellow at the Macdowell Colony. She has taught in MFA program for Creative Writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Miami University of Ohio and Western New England University and was speechwriter for Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna E. Shalala during the first days of the Clinton administration and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. An avid Italian cook, she lives on Cape Cod with her husband and their nine children. Her newest novel, The Good Son, a story about two women, one whose son was convicted of murdering the other’s daughter, is out from Mira/HarperCollins.
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