The Good Son
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
From No.1 New York Times bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard comes the gripping, emotionally charged novel of a mother who must help her son after he is convicted of a devastating crime. What do you do when the person you love best becomes unrecognisable to you? For Thea Demetriou, the answer is both simple and agonising: you keep loving him somehow. Stefan was just seventeen when he went to prison for the drug-fuelled murder of his girlfriend, Belinda. Three years later, he's released to a world that refuses to let him move on. Belinda's mother, once Thea's good friend, galvanises the community to rally against him to protest in her daughter's memory. The media paints Stefan as a symbol of white privilege and indifferent justice. Neighbours, employers, even some members of Thea's own family turn away. Meanwhile Thea struggles to understand her son. At times, he is still the sweet boy he has always been; at others, he is a young man tormented by guilt and almost broken by his time in prison. But as his efforts to make amends meet escalating resistance and threats, Thea suspects more forces are at play than just community outrage. And if there is so much she never knew about her own son, what other secrets has she yet to uncover -- especially about the night Belinda died?
Reviews with the most likes.
Interesting Story, Perhaps Better Served By A Different Storytelling Technique. This is an interesting story of what happens after a person who has been accused of a heinous crime is released from prison and the toll wrought on the person and their family and friends - particularly in the face of continued harassment from the community. Readers who hate multi-perspective stories will enjoy the fact that we only really get one perspective here, but this is actually the weakest thing about the book to my own mind. For me, having a multi-perspective book with the prisoner's mother (the perspective we get here), the prisoner, and maybe even the stranger and the victim's mother, would have made this story quite a bit tighter and potentially, assuming it was done right, that much more interesting. The issues that the book does explore well - restorative justice, repentance, forgiveness, mother's love, etc - could have been further strengthened by this other technique as well. Still, for what we do get here, it is fairly solid but not “edge of your seat” reading. If you go into this expecting a thrill-a-minute... you're reading the wrong dang book. But if you look at this more as a character study / family drama with elements of suspense and thriller, you're likely going to leave this book more satisfied. Very much recommended.
