Her One Regret
Donna Freitas’s psychological thriller Her One Regret is about a missing mother and regretting motherhood.
Lucy disappears from a parking lot, leaving her baby behind. Her best friend, Michelle, thinks she was kidnapped. But then Lucy’s confession of motherhood remorse is leaked, and people wonder whether she is a victim or a criminal. A police investigation and moral debate ensue in her small Rhode Island beach community: Julia, a former artist and struggling full-time mother, envies Lucy; a retired detective, Diana, looks back to cases resembling Lucy’s; Michelle defends Lucy’s innocence.
Tactile details, as of Lucy’s forgotten purchases, Julia’s neglected art supplies, and case files, in the book’s first part are used to spotlight society’s assumptions about motherhood. The introspective prose exposes taboo subjects well, one thought at a time. A sense of suspicion and alarm grows as the novel covers elements like Julia’s neighbor’s nighttime roving. There are spooky, claustrophobic descriptions, as of a basement, Julia’s troubled inner landscape, and community life in the off-season.
As the debate over Lucy’s perspective and the investigation into her disappearance intensifies, Julia and Michelle’s arguments with their husbands, podcast episodes about motherhood regret, and detective interviews raise the volume. It’s a tense airing of blame cast in all directions. Some potency is lost when people fall into competing sides, and the included online content pales in comparison to people’s compelling internal struggles. Still, the book works toward a satisfying ending that confers a different outcome for everyone.
Using an uncomfortable atmosphere to deliver the message that everyone is implicated in society-wide judgments toward women who don’t want to be mothers, the psychological thriller-cum-manifesto Her One Regret is about eschewing shame.
Reviewed by
Mari Carlson
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
