Member Reviews

The story revolves around Lila, the youngest of three siblings, whose mother disappeared when they were children. Left with an abusive father who frequently beat her, the children were told their mother had been sent to a local asylum because she was "crazy." But was that the truth?

As Lila grows up and has children of her own, hints emerge that their mother may have simply left, unraveling a compelling mystery. The story explores how traits often pass from mother to daughter, adding depth to the narrative.

I found the characters and dialogue engaging and looked forward to returning to their lives each time I picked up the book.

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I love a multi-generational story about strong women & their careers/families/lives. This is just that type of story with an added emphasis on motherhood/daughterhood. Through this book as we jump through timelines of three-generations of women we learn about these women & understand the feelings & motivations of their actions. It feels raw and unbelievable at times but also beautiful and heartwarming. Sometimes the flow/pacing was a bit slow but I generally really enjoyed reading the book.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book. All thoughts & opinions are mine alone.

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This book was a hard one for me to read. From the title, this is a story about women in a family. But the sad part is almost all of the characters are not at all likable. Having a character that is likable drives you to finish a book - you want to know what happened to them - so you keep on reading. The only character that I could relate to at all was Joe, he seemed like a good guy. This story is filled with physical, emotional and mental abuse of children.

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This is a multigenerational family drama. The story is character driven and I love these types of books. The focus of the plot is on three women. The grandmother, mother, and daughter. Each of these women are complex and interesting. As a mother I have suffered from mom guilt many times but these characters don’t have a lot of that even when confronted about their lack of maternal behaviour and perceived parenting failures. All of these women are strong willed and tough. Grace (the daughter in the book) does have a lot of resentment toward her mother for not being more loving and present and she is currently dealing with this. I love the character of Joe who raises his daughters and accepts his wife for who she is until finally he gets frustrated with the situation. Overall this a layered story with very interesting characters. If you like a family drama give this one a try!

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First, I’d like to extend my gratitude to NetGalley, Susan Rieger, and Random House Publishing Group for providing me with the opportunity to read and review Like Mother, Like Mother.

As someone who has experienced a fraught relationship with her own mother, this book deeply resonated with me and touched on what many call the “mother wound.” It serves as a poignant reminder that not every mother-daughter relationship has a happy ending—or even an ending at all. Not all relationships are close, seamless, or tied up neatly with a bow, and this novel portrays that complexity beautifully.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and its exploration of the nuances of maternal relationships. However, I found myself wishing for a deeper dive into the "finding Zelda" subplot. It felt like Grace’s discovery of Zelda came too easily; a bit more investigation or struggle on Grace’s part could have added more depth and tension to the narrative. That said, the reunion between Zelda (or Frida) and Clara was incredibly impactful—a scene that truly stirred my emotions and left me upset in the best way. Zelda’s actions in that moment were frustrating but felt true to the complexity of her character.

Overall, Like Mother, Like Mother is a powerful read that doesn’t shy away from the hard truths about relationships, particularly those between mothers and daughters. It’s a compelling, thought-provoking novel that I’d recommend to anyone who appreciates stories with raw emotional honesty and layered characters.

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Title says it all because I have to read the book to find out how this comes to play a very important part.. It's interesting how one thing can lead to another thing. In this book, everybody had some kind of issue but I really find it interesting when they start to do the dna test. How things started to come out of the closet It started in detroit in the sixties with the father and his three children. He was very abusive to his wife so he sent her to the crazy assignment. And he told the story how the wife died. They all grew up in a very toxic relationship.The youngest daughter took it hard. She was.
Always the brunt of the father's beatings. The grandmother was no better.She had to raise them and she wasn't too happy. The youngest finally went to school in Michigan. She started a whole new life and as a writer for newspapers. She eventually married a man named joe and this was start a very interesting lifestyle. He came from money and had a very weird marriage. She had a daughter named grace and she was like.
Firecracker on wheels. She wanted to find out why her grandmother died. When she went to school She met a woman called ruth who came from a poor background in the south. Her mother was very diligent getting her to school and everything. They became like sister And graces older's sisters were like on a different path and they had their own career. I like this book because it was a love story And a mystery how all this got tied together in a very interesting what

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Thank you netgalley for the arc of like mother like mother. This literary family fiction is based on intergenerational trauma and how the effects the development of relationships. Lila has a mom who disappears when she is 2 and told she is dead and a father (Aldo) who is abusive. Lila meets Joe and falls in love. Joe wants children even though Lila feels she has no motherly instincts. Joe says he will raise the children a d they go ahead and have 3 daughters. Their youngest Grace was most impacted by Lilas not being around. She has trouble understanding how her mother could be so distant and feels very unloved. Grace ends up following in Lila footsteps in career and life. Very well written, emotional and powerful. Four stars.

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Three generations of ambitious, "I know what I want from life", and determined women makes a great story because it is tough to see three generations of those without someone breaking the chain at some point by trying to tie them down, break their will, or destroy their dreams. No one would try to do that to three generations of men, but women would always be scrutinized and called names for it.

Lila did not receive her mother's love. She was left with her abusive father. That destroyed any motherly instincts she might had. She did not want to be a mother when she did not have one to look up to herself. Instead she poured herself into her career. She gave a birth, not once but 3 times. However, just her mother did, she left them to their father to become the editor making waves. Grace felt the burnt of it, just like Lila did once. But she followed her mother's steps to become a successful journalist. She made it her life's mission to figure out what happened to her grandma because she was the beginning.

I want to give high five to every woman in this story for following what they cared for instead of what was expected of them. Instead of whining about the situation, they fought to find a solution. They did not care so much about the impact they were making on others but also would any man care? NOPE

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Three generations of women and the long-term effects of parental abandonment is the theme of this family saga. Politics, modern culture and the Jewish experience in America are also themes throughout this story of the Pereria women. The main character in the story, Lila, is retiring from her position as executive editor at The Washington Globe when she becomes ill from lung cancer and dies. But Lila and her story continue on as the story as it goes back and forth over time to tell the readers about Lila's difficult childhood with a mother that was sent to an institution when Lila was two years old, and she was left in the care of her brutal and abusive father.

Lila is an unusual character and while I liked her ambition and attitude about not caring what other people think, I dislike people who ignore and dislike their own children. I understood Lila was this way because she suffered so much abuse from her father but the answer then is to either get extensive therapy or not have children. Lucky for Lila, her husband Joe was very happy to be a loving parent to their three daughters. Two scenes really stood out to me with Lila: when her daughter Grace is first born, Lila picks her up just once holding her at arm's length and like she never picks up her baby again. When Grace is in college, Lila thinks she heard a rumor her daughter might be engaged but decides she doesn't care enough to look into it.

The second part of the book is about Grace who suffers and is angry that her mother never loved her or paid attention to her. Grace's roommate Ruth also takes up a lot of space in the story as we meet Ruth and her mother and grandmother, both single mothers and Ruth's teacher and husband who took Ruth under there wings. Grace writes a book called "The Lost Mother" which is a thinly veiled book about the missing grandmother who always seemed to hover over their lives. The very end of the book finds Grace and her sisters looking for what happened to Zelda after she was sent away and find surprising results. I had mixed feelings about the novel as a whole. The characters were fascinating and I enjoyed the generational aspects of the story. But the story was very dialogue heavy and none of the characters spoke like real people as I don't know anyone whose conversations always include quotes by famous people.

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<b>The Short of It:</b>

Mothers and daughters and the hard places in between.

<b>The Rest of It:</b>

Like Mother, Like Mother is an amazing read. The first half of the book is mostly about Lila and her rise to editorial glory. She is a powerhouse. She knows how to ask a question, knows how to get the story and her energy seems endless. But being successful comes with a trade-off. She told her husband Joe early on that if they had kids, they would mostly be his. His to raise, his.

This is absolutely the case. Grace and her two sisters did okay without Lila in their lives, because Joe was an amazing father. As the girls grew into women, it became clear, especially to Grace that Lila was a different kind of person. Not exactly dismissive of her children, but that she didn’t really know HOW to be a mother to them. Look at her own childhood. Lila’s own mother, was committed to an asylum but then disappeared. Could she have intentionally left her children to that horrible abusive man? Yes.

The story unfolds slowly as Grace begins to dabble in DNA testing. As you can imagine, this uncovers a few surprises. I liked how the author set this book amidst political upheaval but used a different President to illustrate society on the cusp of falling apart. So there is constant tension as Lila must endure a brutal political season before retirement.

This book is absolutely about mothers and daughters but really it’s about relationships. Lila’s upbringing affects her marriage, it affects Grace’s opinion of marriage and motherhood. The people they interact with and befriend are also affected by these relationships. What’s interesting is that although Lila really does her children wrong, I still had empathy for her because she didn’t have it in her to be the mom they needed and she knew it right from the start.

To Grace though, attending White House dinners over dinner with your own kids just doesn’t sit right. She wanted the mom that baked cookies and attended parent teacher conferences. Not the glittering, multi-faceted Lila. But what can you do? You can’t choose your own mother.

I really enjoyed this book. It’s a little high brow, but deep and with plenty of flawed characters. I was pulled right into the story from the first few pages. You can’t say that about too many books. It would be a wonderful book to discuss in book club.

For more reviews, visit my blog: <a href="http://bookchatter.net">Book Chatter</a>.

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An engaging story of women through generations (not just mother and daughter, but also sister, friends that become like a sister and the men that are foils for highlighting the roles these women have, the dynamics between them, their successes in business and failures in relationships. I enjoy reading books exploring family dynamics and dysfunction and I really enjoyed trying to understand, Lila whose mother Zelda disappeared and understanding Grace in the context of the impact these women had on her life. It’s a book about inspiring women and gives hints at what might have shaped them on their journeys.

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I didn’t really enjoy this multigenerational novel about mothers, and daughters. The characters were complicated, but not appealing, and in the end I found it hard to finish the book.

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A family history book, with the same basic events covered 3 times from slightly varying perspectives and with more or less background info. Kind of a scattered approach, but very readable. A fascinating depiction of a family, motherhood, what marriage has meant or required of women at different times in America and how women have (or have not) dealt with that. The cyclical, dialogue-light writing style will not be for everyone, and sometimes people use turns of phrases at times when they never would have, historically or at their ages, which I found distracting. Overly rosy view of journalism. Interesting/weird that every part of recent history is accurately reflected in this, except Donald Trump doesn't exist or something—I wondered about that decision, as it picks up around the other side of the first Trump presidency as if it never happened, but it never happening largely changed nothing.

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Such a great story. I bought physical copies for my mother and sisters because I feel like everyone should read this gripping story

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This story is divided into three parts, each focusing on a different woman across three generations, all of whom grapple with trauma inherited from the past. These women are fiercely independent, yet burdened with the weight of their experiences. I found myself deeply empathizing with the characters, and although they’re often unlikable, their backstories make it understandable—if not inevitable—why they are the way they are, which makes them feel more real and complex.

The narrative is largely character-driven, and while some parts feel a bit drawn out, I still found the story compelling and ultimately very enjoyable.

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Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC digital copy of this book. I did not enjoy this book, I really tried to. I found it to be pretentious. There was too much effort put into being politically correct with quotes and statements that would not have been used in the era of time presented. The characters were unlikeable and uninteresting.

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I heard a lot of hype about this book and was excited to read it, but I was rather disappointed.

Like Mother, Like Mother is a story of mothers, and such stories, at face value, usually call to me. Lila Pereira and her siblings grow up in Detroit, the children of an abusive father and a mother, Zelda, who is said to have had a tremendous bout with depression and is placed in an institution, where she eventually takes her own life. As the product of what some might call bad mothering, Lila is unable to mother in the traditional sense. While she loves her 3 daughters, she is not present, and it is her husband, Joe, who assumes the role of nurturer. Meanwhile, Lila becomes a famous, nationally known journalist.

Lila's youngest daughter, Grace, becomes obsessed with Zelda, and what might have really become of her,. When Lila dies, (and with Lila's blessing), Grace goes searching for information on Zelda, and the outcome is interesting, while not surprising.

There are a number of characters in this book, some of whom are well developed and life-like, and others, not so much. Lila is perhaps the most fascinating of all. The first third of the book held my attention, and middle third (and then some) had me quite bored, and the end ties the book together and is the most satisfying part.

Thanks to #netgalley for the ARC.

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A riveting story of strong-willed women and their interactions. We follow three generations of women through family dramas with sometimes humor to guide us along the way. A good read to sink your teeth into! Thanks for the opportunity to enjoy this work.

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This book had an interesting premise with a successful mother being the main character of this multigenerational family. I had difficulty getting into this book and it took me a long time to finish it.
The saga started in the 1960s in Detroit and introduced the family and the situation of their lives. Aldo, not only abused Lila, but committed her mother to a psychiatric facility, when the children were young, and claimed that she died there a few years later.
I liked Lila- the strongest character in the book, although she was a poor mother,(not having had an example), she was quite successful in her job and well grounded in her environment.
A secondary character in the beginning of the book, really developed some dimension in Parts 2 and 3 when she had more focus and a better sense of self. Although her part was tedious and slow paced, she was a clever interviewer, who pursued her story thoroughly. I thought there was too much backstory on Ruth, her college roommate that didn't add to the overall story.
I also though that the Charles Webb political campaign (so obviously modeled on Trump) was out of place.
Most of the characters were unlikable, and that politics was completely unnecessary to the story.
I did like the general story, even though the extreme abuse by Aldo was terrible (why wasn't child protective services called?).
The Third part was worth all the wading through the first part and I liked the ending.
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and Random House and am leaving this review with my opinions voluntarily.

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I really enjoyed how Rieger captures the tension between generations and the way family history can shape who we are. The characters are well-developed and relatable, and I found myself really invested in their struggles. It’s one of those books that makes you reflect on your own family relationships and the things that get passed down. If you’re into stories about family, identity, and personal growth, this one’s definitely worth a read!

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