Author: Donna Freitas
Year published: 2025
Category: Adult fiction (mystery)
Pages: 384 pages
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): USA (RI)
Summary: When successful Rhode Island real estate agent Lucy Mendoza vanishes, leaving her baby behind in a grocery store parking lot, the news quickly makes national headlines. Lucy’s best friend, Michelle, is devastated, and terrified that Lucy’s life is at stake. But she knows something that could complicate the police investigation. Lucy had confessed something unspeakable: She regretted becoming a mother, so much that she’d fantasized about faking her own kidnapping. If the police and media were to find out, Lucy would become a monster in public opinion. Michelle is sure Lucy would never abandon her daughter. But could she be wrong? Could Lucy have been so desperate she chose to escape her life?
Donna Freitas has drawn from groundbreaking research to bring readers this unforgettable novel. Her One Regret is at once a pulse-pounding feminist thriller, a moving depiction of the realities of motherhood, and a rich exploration of a subject our culture and society have rendered nearly verboten: the possibility that for some women, motherhood is an unfixable mistake.
Review: This book is intense and spoke to me in ways I didn't think it would. Women are vilified for not wanting children (I didn't until I had mine), vilified for being bad mothers if we don't do it "right," and vilified for complaining about being a mother.
This novel is about a woman who disappears, leaving her baby behind. Did she plan it? Did someone take her? The internet, the talking heads, the police... everyone has a theory of what she did, what happened, and all of them are rushing to judgment.
This novel weaves a good story with multiple narrators who alternate chapters, revealing bits of the story as they go. I didn't figure out the truth until just before the reveal, so that's a good thing. Underneath the story, the mystery, the interesting characters, and the good writing, there is strong social commentary on women and how we're treated by society (a news headline in the book says "Local Mother..." instead of "local woman"). Women are defined by their status as mothers in a way that men are not defined by their status as fathers. The author's Afterword discusses how she feels about having children and how she has been treated because she chose not to have them.
As a mystery, this book is good. As a social commentary, it's excellent.
Challenges for which this counts:
- Cover love--Something you might find in a child's bedroom (stroller)
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