Mother Knows Best is a page turning thriller I am regretting not getting to in my TBR pile sooner! When Claire loses her young son to a crippling genetic defect she and her husband find their grief unending.... and wish to add another child to their family. But at what cost? In an online support group, she finds other mothers like her and soon heard whispers of a possible genetic modification experiment splicing a healthy moms genes into the mitochondria of her egg to create a normal child. Claire clings to this last hope of having a normal child - but what ensues could cost her marriage and her life. I loved this book. The characters are complicated and conflicted but developed. There were twists I didn’t see coming, and a couple I did. Overall, I would highly recommend this book. I received an ARC of this book, all opinions are my own.

This was such a bizarre book. I could not stand it at all. Trying to enjoy this was like having my teeth pulled without novocaine.

Oh, this one was interesting! A very different take on the domestic thriller genre. Great pick for public libraries where thrillers are popular.

This book was super predictable all the way to the end, but the way the author told the story is what sucked me in and had me devouring it in two short days.
It's every mothers dream to have a healthy baby, but to what extremes is a mother willing to go to ensure that happens? Claire has already lost a child to a mitochondrial disease when he was 8 and watching her son suffer and ultimately die practically ruins her marriage. So when her husband Ethan and her decide to try IVF she goes with a doctor who isn't afraid to take a risk at the nudging of his lab partner Jillian. They may have figured out a way to give her a baby without the bad genetics. The only caveat is that it will have 3 paternal parents instead of 2. What could possibly go wrong....?! Everything comes at a price, but is it worth it?

From the get go this is a rollercoaster of a read.
Secrets and lies. Tense and well written. I’d recommend to everyone. I read this in one day x

Thank you NetGally for this ARC. I enjoyed this book and thought it had a good story with developed characters. I would recommend this book to friends and family.

So, I confess that I found this book very interesting, and almost never exciting.

The concept was unique. I did find myself wishing for a bit more insight into the science behind all of this. Instead, we focused more on the obsessive histrionics of one of the people involved in this drama.

I didn't care for the characters - even Abby grated on me after a while.

However, I was still curious enough that I wanted to see how it all would end.

It could be that the various POV characters mixed with the various timelines did me in. Every time I found myself drawn into one person or timeline, the author would switch to another.

I do think that many people will enjoy this one - especially the unique concept - but I was left just a little cold.

I saw this book about several months ago. I wanted to read it and therefore, when I got the chance to get a copy, I jumped at it. This book did not disappoint. While, I did figure out all of the plot twists before their reveals; I still enjoyed this book a lot.

Claire, Robert, and Jillian have a very "complicated" relationship. I could understand Claire's great need to be the test subject for Robert and Jillian. When it came to Robert; I thought that I would despise him but I didn't. In fact, I felt a bit sorry for him. Than there is Jillian. She is the "wild card". She brought the added intensity that the story needed.

A fast read for sure. I was so engaged with the plot and the characters that this made for easy reading. Kira Peikoff will have readers of fast paced/psychological thrillers thrilled with this book that will keep you up all night with engaging characters and a great storyline. As the saying goes "Mother Knows Best"!

Kira Piekoff's novel, Mother Knows Best, left me wanting. What started out as an interesting premise ended uo not fulfilling the promise.
Mother Knows Best started out feeling like a medical procedural. The characters and their respective goals and ambitions were well drawn and clear. We met Claire, the woman who dare not conceive for fear of passing a fatal medical condition to her child. We meet the medical researchers, the doctor and his co-worker/lover, Jill. I was quite taken by this part ofthe book.
The doctor, Jill and Claire successfully(secretly) conceive a child, but the news leaks out. The doctor and a pregnant Claire go on the runm leaving Jill to face the consequences of their actions, including prison.
The second half of the book got a little too thriller for my taste. Jill, once out of prison, wants her child, and her revenge. The pace got a bit frenetic and the action a little too predictable.
The story is related in three character's voices; Claire, Jill and their daughter Abby. I liked the first half more than the second.
I received my copy through NetGalley under no obligation.

Y’all. This book. I’m not sure why it’s not more popular. After finding out that she had a mitochondrial disease that caused the death of her first child, Claire secretly has a procedure done to have another child with the DNA of three people. The Problem was that this three dna embryo procedure was illegal. As a baby born with two genetic mothers and one genetic father, Abby, Claire’s daughter, was the first of her kind.

So much happens in this book. Lots of twists and turns – some predictable, others not, and all paced perfectly. The characters had depth and complexities which means the multiple perspective that I don’t usually love added to the story. I’d totally read this author again.

As a science nerd, I loved this book! A woman desperate to be a mother again is willing to try anything to get pregnant with a healthy baby. She lost her young son due to a mitochondrial disease and has been unable to get pregnant since. She hears about a doctor on her Mito Moms Facebook group who might be able to help her. The doctor is doing a secret trial that would utilize the DNA from her eggs with the mitochondrial DNA from a donor egg which could give her the healthy baby she dreams of. But at what costs?

Mother Knows Best is a psychological thriller that has an interesting Sci-fi element to it. I say interesting, because it's not too far fetched or unrealistic, but still incomprehensible, to a degree. For the people interested in this book, I would suggest that you skip reading the synopsis and go with your gut because OOH BOY, there are spoilers.

The story is told from the perspective of three characters--Claire, a woman who so desperately wants to be a mother again after losing a child to mitochondrial disease; Abby, a little girl who just wants to know the truth and Jillian, a young woman with incredible ambition and an obsession. It starts off with Claire seeking experimental genome altering technology to have her embryo edited so that she can have a child without her fatal mutation....which, honestly, sounds pretty fun right? Except, the research she seeks to help her out is illegal. And her husband is big on the bioethics thing (he's a professor at Columbia or something. I don't really care much about him so I don't remember all the details, don't sue me), and so she decides to go under the table and keep this experiment a secret. Except, of course, shit like this stinks up pretty easy and things start to spiral out of control really quickly. And the story takes off from there.

To be fair, I thought this book was written pretty well. I loved the structure, I loved the way the plot progressed and I really found myself invested in the book in that sense. In the first half of the book, we see Abby, Claire's daughter's perspective of the present and Jillian and Claire's perspective of the past. So we already know that the experiment Claire wanted to take on was a success and she already had a child. Maybe, for this reason, the first half of the book was a bit of a drag for me. It just felt like the stakes were not very high there. The twists in the book were pretty predictable, too, so there's no big mystrey in here. I did not like a single character for a long time in the book and it made it hard for me to care about what was happening, even if I wanted to know what was happening. However, the book really picked up in the second half. I was more invested in what was going on and I felt like the stakes were actually real. I would've preferred it if the alternating chapters in the first half had not been set up as if some impossible thing was going to happen... But, oh, well.

The characters in this book, like I said, were super unlikeable. This bugged me for the first half of the book a lot. But as I kept reading, all of them kind of grew on me. I think the unlikeableness of these characters was definitely intended, but it still messed with my experience of reading this novel. I could still appreciate that this was a well written book though, so I kept reading, and I'm kind of glad that I did! I think I sympathized with Claire the most, even though she was a bit whiny at times and also, super selfish in a weird way. I loved Abby. She was such a brat and it was very realistic because she was also eleven and i wanted to lowkey lock her up in her room and yell at her about desert, so that was amazing! xD

Jokes aside, I am a biotechnology graduate with an interest in genetics and this subject was really interesting to me for that very reason. I have to say, I take a very conservative stand on genome editing when it comes to human embryos, but I was interested in how this issue was explored by means of a thrilling fictional story here. I found out that the author herself has a degree in Bioethics and it definitely shows, I think!

All in all, it was a pretty enjoyable read which, I think, would've been perfect if the first half was only a bit shorter! A huge thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review! All opinions are my own!

A very well written suspense novel with some fantastic twists and turns! Although there were some twists I didn’t get, the complete ending was a little obvious - it would’ve been brilliant to not have a happy ever after.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
I thought this book was a very well written, smart, original, suspenseful and addictive thriller.
I loved how the author told the story to the reader by using the past and present story lines.
I will definitely be reading more books by this author.

A story that feels like a thunderstorm. The more you read, the more you feel, the more you get immersed, and the more you want to know what will happen next. I had my doubts about a medical thriller, but the idea seemed to be interesting enough, and so I discovered a brilliant development, human characters and a plot like no other I have seen so far. OMG you better read this!!

Full review in my blog (December 4): https://tintanocturna.blogspot.com/2019/12/resena-review-mother-knows-best.html

When I picked up this book I had no real idea what to expect. Going purely from the book title, I envisioned a terrifying thrill ride, with a 'Mother Gothel' -like villain. Instead, I was thrown into this complex tale of life, what hereditary illness could do to people and the lengths a mother would go to to ensure her child's healthy...

There is also a look into mental illness and moral implications for the modification of humans. This story plays out through multiple viewpoints, jumping between the past and present to build a web, tangled and intricate. Each character we follow in this tale has a unique voice, making the transitions easier to follow.

If the multitude of underlying themes don't pull you in within the first few chapters, then I don't know what will. The emotional rollercoaster and need to know where this will end, made the, at times, slow pacing well worth the time.

If you enjoy a twisty, turning story, with multiple layers, then I'd say this is one book you need to read asap...

This book sounds amazing, but at this time it just isn’t for me. I think it will be great when I am ready to come back to it!

Meh, this one was just okay. The plot was interesting until it turned silly. There were a lot of leaps and sliding pieces that felt so unbelievable, it reached a point where it was hard to take the story seriously.

I didn't particularly like any character - they all seemed manipulative liars, all out for their own interests (except for one perfect person..ugh). I also found Abby's age hard to pin point until it was really pointed out - I must have missed where they said how old she was and felt like she was older than her 11 years. But it's an easy read and I did want to know how it would all turn out.

I wasn't sure I was going to like this book to start with, however I'm glad I continued with it. It had a great storyline that did not lack in imagination.
There was plenty of mystery and suspense.
I found this story to be very thought provoking and I feel it would be a great book for discussion at a book club

This was one weird book! It was not my cup of tea, but it was well written and suspenseful enough to receive five stars from me. I just found it a little too implausible and strange, but I am also not a huge scifi fan so perhaps that colored my judgment.