Book Description

Sharp Objects meets My Lovely Wife in this tightly drawn debut that peels back the layers of the most complicated of mother-daughter relationships…

For the first eighteen years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair and practically lived at the hospital. Neighbors did all they could, holding fundraisers and offering shoulders to cry on, but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with Rose Gold.

Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar.

After serving five years in prison, Patty gets out with nowhere to go and begs her daughter to take her in. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes.

Patty insists all she wants is to reconcile their differences. She says she’s forgiven Rose Gold for turning her in and testifying against her. But Rose Gold knows her mother. Patty Watts always settles a score.

Unfortunately for Patty, Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling…

And she’s waited such a long time for her mother to come home. (Description credit: GoodReads)

My Review

I went into this book with uncertainty. I was skeptical that the book was basically just a retelling of the Gypsy Blanchard story. And while, yes, the author probably drew inspiration from Gypsy’s real life experience of munchausen by proxy, this book stands all on its own.

I was hooked from the very beginning. Rose Gold and her mom, Patty, are quite the characters! Reading about them was wild. The lines of good and evil are blurred when it comes to those two. I found myself, and I hate to admit this, feeling some sort of empathy towards Patty at times. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a seriously shady lady, but the author does a nice job of adding humanity to her character.

Another thing the author executed well was the plot twists. They felt intentional. What I mean is, the twists didn’t feel like they were there simply for shock value. There was just the right amount of foreshadowing sprinkled in. Which is tricky, because when an author drops too many hints it’s predictable, but not enough and the story line becomes unbelievable.

Overall, Darling Rose Gold is a solid debut novel. It is a story of obsession, relationships gone wrong, spite, and revenge. It is so much more than I expected. I definitely see this book doing well when it is released next year.