The last thing Anna needs is a baby. Given her background, she never dreamt of having a real family. That is, until she meets her birth mother, Marlene, and it feels as though everything changes. But does it? What I’ve read so far makes this a promising read.

From the premise, I really wanted to read this book. However I feel somewhat disappointed by it. Maybe it’s me and I just didn’t get it but I found it to be disjointed with characters I just couldn’t get behind. For me the whole reading process was tedious so unable to rate this more than one star. Thank you to NetGalley, Headline and the author for the chance to review.

There were just too many emotive storylines piled onto one woman for the story to flow for me.
Anna dealing with her unexpected and possibly unwanted pregnancy in an unstable relationship whilst trying to find her birth mother were enough for me without the huge mental health issues brought to the table by Hebe and Marlene.
Whilst Marlenes generally unstable character is required to draw the darker side of the plot to the forefront it was all too much for me to be able to really get on board with.

This is dark, chilling and a little bit twisted. There are few redeeming characters, but there are some moments of dark comedy.

A novel where disbelief rather has to be suspended, but a great ride.

Highly recommended.

I'm afraid that I really didn't like this book. There are some really unpleasant characters and I found the story way too far fetched.
Thanks to NetGalley for a preview copy.
Copied to Goodreads.

This is a dark psychological thriller which, after a slow start, turns into an over-the-top roller coaster full-on nightmare. The plot appears straightforward at first, when Anna, a psychologist who works with traumatised refugees, finds her long lost birth mother after a chance discovery of a piece of paper at the bottom of an old handbag. Anna’s life appears chaotic, with uncertain career prospects, an alcoholic boyfriend, very little money and an unplanned pregnancy. The reunion with Marlene, her birth mother, and Hebe, her half-sister, seems positive at first and although their behaviour seems a little off and chaotic, Anna welcomes the new relationship and her life appears to take a positive turn. Marlene’s interventions and “support” start resulting in Anna developing a sinister dependency as the pregnancy progresses. Anna realises this fairly late on, with the truth about Marlene’s character becoming evident only towards the end of her pregnancy and as she approaches childbirth. Not a novel to share with pregnant women or new mums!

With thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an advance copy.

Mother’s Day
At the age of 35, Anna Rampion is pregnant. She’s not quite sure how it happened as, after all, she and her partner, Dermot , use contraception but it is his? There was that late night fumble at a party with Neil, Dermot’s friend and bandmate….
They live pretty well hand to mouth. Anna is a temp in a hospital and he’s a musician waiting to hit the big time. But now Anna’s pregnant and considering a termination, she starts thinking about her real mother. She was adopted after being found at 9 weeks old in an orange handbag on a traffic roundabout and she remembers her adoptive mother, Sarah, with affection and love. However, Sarah was run over by a lorry while carrying Anna home on a sledge. Anna was then left with her father, Nick or Nicholas, who has slid into quirks and foibles.
But then in the pub one evening with Neil and Dermot, by complete surprise, Anna finds a secret compartment in the orange handbag which contains a dog eared and faded school report in the name of Marlene Mather. Is this Anna’s real mother? She immediately goes onto social media to search for women with that name and has a reply. This is from a Hebe who purports to be her sister and says that she can put Anna in contact with the mysterious Marlene.
Suddenly Anna has a new family; not just her real, long lost Mum but brothers, sisters, (even if Hebe is a little strange), Marlene’s French boyfriend, Tristan and Hebe’s cat. And how Marlene’s eyes light up when she discovers that Anna’s pregnant. But Marlene is looking forward to much more than becoming a grandmother……
This was a really hard read and maybe it was because I have recently read a book which features one of the main plot elements. This was a thriller and was written in a sensitive, poignant way which, although the scene was gruesome in the extreme, it did not feel gratuitous. The narrative of Mother’s Day felt very disjointed and I wondered if it would have worked better as a screenplay due to the myriad scene changes. None of the characters really gelled with me as they didn’t seem believeable and I found that I didn’t really care about them. I know the book is billed as darkly comic but it seemed to be eccentricity for eccentricity’s sake.
At times it seemed to verge on farce with a fair amount of coincidence – Anna apparently has been carrying the bag that she was found in for most of her life and only now does she find the school report in her birth mother’s name. Why would you be carrying around a bag with that association and wouldn’t it be a little tatty by now? However, the epilogue was good although it did have the feel of tying up loose ends conveniently.
It was the book’s cover that attracted me and it made me think that the book EAwas a thriller but it was something else entirely. I love dark comedy but this wasn’t dark enough.
However, there were some interesting themes in the book; motherhood and how society almost fetishises it, is your real family the people who gave birth to you or the ones that chose you?, and unrealised dreams put aside to enable someone else to achieve theirs. For example, Dermot’s talent eclipsed Anna’s dreams of becoming a doctor.
So I have to say that ‘Mother’s Day’ wasn’t really for me.
My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an arc.

I actually enjoyed this thriller about an adoptive daughter and her search for her birth mother who turns out to be quite sadistic!! It is darkly funny in places and it did keep me reading well into the night. It is definitely different but that is what I liked about it. Some of it is far fetched and the ending was a bit much for me which is why I didn't award it five stars. But, all in all, a brilliant, well written debut novel.

Mother's Day has not one likeable or even relateable character, the plot is mostly beyond belief and sometimes utterly chilling and yet this book is strangely compelling!

This was a book that I wanted to love, but I really didn’t! It took too long to get to the main story. Wasn’t a big fan of the character either. Sorry this one wasn’t for me .

This is a very slow burning story that is very dark and tense at times. Probably best described as a domestic thriller, this book is quite upsetting at times but certainly worth a read.

This just wasn't for me. It all just seemed a bit idiotic. The characters didn't interest me and it all just felt slow and uninteresting. I dont know what it was, just nothing about it appealed to me for some reason? I skimmed a lot of it hoping it may improve further on but sadly it didn't

What an incredible first novel! Will look forward to Abigail’s next one to see what she writes about. Anna goes in search for her birth mother- she had been thinking about doing so for a while. I felt it was a bit hard to fully get into, but then it takes a real turn- full of dark twists. Definitely didn't imagine it would end like it did, although it was obvious something strange was going to be in the mix.

This just wasn’t for me sorry! There’s parts of it that were very dark, which generally I don’t mind in a novel if it feels appropriate but I felt so removed from the characters that the dark elements felt very unnecessary. I had to skip a lot just to get through it.

I didn't like the characters in this book, and didn't care what they did or what happened to them. Sorry, not the book for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Headline for ARC.
I'm not sure what to say about this one.
Let me start with the premise - mid-30s Anna is scraping a living in temporary employment at a charity, living in a depressing rented flat with her long term boyfriend Dermot, an equally penniless folk musician. Anna has long fantasised about finding her birth mother, after her happy childhood with foster parents ended prematurely. Is this why she's feeling unhappy always and why Dermot can't fully commit to each other or is that the bizarre love triangle with his bandmate Neil? Her foster father, who has tried to find his own birth family, is the opposite of encouraging in her search.
She finds some clues, meets her sister, then rapidly gets drawn into the orbit of their rich, eccentric and glamorous mother Marlene (Ma), who seems hell bent on changing Anna's world while alienating her other children.
What happens next is dark, dizzying, baffling, terrifying and then back to baffling. Although some reviewers have enjoyed the dark humour, the darkness predominated. I found Ma's character portrayed without empathy and it was very puzzling to me why Anna was destabilised quite so quickly (the later explanation for this, which I won't share here, is particularly odd as Anna can read). The ending, while neatly satisfying in some ways, was frankly silly when looked at outside the fever dream of this novel.
Despite all of that, I read it quickly and I wanted to know how it turned out. I will look for this debut novelist's next one to see where her imagination takes us.

Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Really enjoyed this book but would have liked more on Ma’s background to give some context.

Where to start. The rating maybe. It only got one star because I finished it however it gave me a headache so the second star is out. Its not often I really dont like a book and to begin with I was enjoying this. However I speed read almost a quarter of the book because although the first three quarters was chaotic (and, to me, idiotic) the last quarter was simply insane.

The storyline is that Anna discovers she is pregnant at about the same time she meets her birth mother. Up until this point she had a half decent boyfriend, Dermot, several friends, a responsible job and an adoptive father. So all people who loved her.

What happens after she meets her birth mother, Marlene, simply spirals out of control until it becomes utterly mad.

I didn't believe in any of the characters. I didn't like any of the characters. I thought the plot premise was great until I realised that the character of Marlene was so psychotic that you'd have to numb not to notice it at first glance.

Anna's character is equally irritating. She's an intelligent woman but her rush headlong into Marlene's world is just so unbelievable. She doesn't listen to anyone (including her own inner voice) when she's told that Marlene is crazy.

In conclusion if Abigail Burdess had made the inclusion of Anna into her mother's life a little slower and Marlene's eccentricity a little more insidious I would have enjoyed it. She might as well have had Anna driving down a road peppered with billboards pointing out the patently obvious as she drove over every one.

I was really looking forward to this book but I found real difficulty in getting to grips with story. Unfortunately it wasn't the book for me and sadly, I didn't finish it.

I loved this book. What an intense read, fast paced and brilliantly written. I couldn't read it quick enough. The storyline was brilliant and I just needed to know what happened next.