Book Description 

A mom will do anything to save her kid. Anything.

“The missing boy is 10-year-old Alfie Risby, and to be perfectly honest with you, he’s a little shit.”

Florence Grimes is a thirty-one-year-old party girl who always takes the easy way out. Single, broke and unfulfilled after the humiliating end to her girl band career, she has only one reason to get out of bed each day: her ten-year-old son Dylan. But then Alfie Risby, her son’s bully and the heir to a vast frozen food empire, mysteriously vanishes during a class trip, and Dylan becomes the prime suspect. Florence, for once, is faced with a task she can’t quit: She’s got to find Alfie and clear her son’s name, or risk losing Dylan forever.

The only problem? Florence has no useful skills, let alone investigative ones, and all the other school moms hate her. Oh, and Florence has a reason to suspect Dylan might not be as innocent as she’d like to believe…

My Review 

This book was on all sorts of buzzworthy lists back in the spring, so naturally, I had to read it. I requested a physical copy via the library network and I also requested the audiobook via the Libby app. I was able to listen to the audiobook before the physical book arrived, so when the book arrived, I let my coworker borrow it. She read it almost as quickly as I listened to the audiobook and we both agreed how much we loved this book. 

Florence has not made very good decisions over the course of her life, but she is fiercely protective of her son Dylan. This “mama bear” instinct is what leads her to make more bad decisions after she suspects that Dylan is involved in his classmate/bully’s disappearance. She goes to outlandish lengths to protect her son under the guise of searching for the missing boy. 

This might sound like a heavy book, but the tone is actually surprisingly light for the subject matter. The plot is fast-paced as Florence is under pressure to solve the mystery before Dylan is implicated. Any moral ambiguity over the possibility of Dylan’s involvement must be pushed aside as our intrepid narrator believes her young son. 

As I already mentioned, this was such an amazing book. I had no idea what was going to happen next or what Florence was going to do on her quest for the truth. There are all sorts of plot twists and red herrings that kept my attention. If you think you know what’s going to happen, no you do not! 

I would absolutely recommend All the Other Mothers Hate Me. This is an amazing debut full of interesting characters and a bananas plot.