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Book Reviewed by:"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…
Hilarious and twisted, propulsive and furious, All the Other Mothers Hate Me is the must-read book of 2025.
Sarah Harman's All the Other Mothers Hate Me is a darkly funny exploration of maternal existential dread, loneliness, aging, and identity that had me equal parts barking out laughter and holding my breath. Harman's ability to wield playful humor without undercutting the seriousness and grave circumstances of her subject is something I absolutely loved. As much as I enjoyed the ridiculousness of the novel, the ending is so very strange. I think the novel could have maintained its sinister but generally upbeat ambiance with a different ending, though the resolution didn't put me off so much as to make me write off everything else I loved about the story as a whole...continued
Full Review
(864 words)
(Reviewed by Lisa Ahima).
In Sarah Harman's All the Other Mothers Hate Me, Florence, an ex-pop star, clings to a notion: that one day, just like Mariah Carey, she will have what she calls her Emancipation of Mimi moment. I immediately knew what she meant, because The Emancipation of Mimi was one of my most impactful musical albums; it was the first CD I remember scraping money together to buy that I didn't have to share with anybody else. Florence and I weren't the only ones who found this album particularly powerful. But what made The Emancipation of Mimi so special to millions? What does it mean to have an Emancipation of Mimi moment?
The Emancipation of Mimi was released in April of 2005 in the United States. Of the 14 original tracks, seven were released ...
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Caitlin Mullen, author of Please See Us
All the Other Mothers Hate Me is a twisty mystery, a shrewd send up of London's upper crust, and a hilarious, heartfelt story of a woman pushed to extremes to protect her only son. Like its protagonist Florence Grimes, this debut is truly one of a kind.
