The Push by Audrey Audrain – Audio

Book Blurb:

Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had.
But in the thick of motherhood’s exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter–she doesn’t behave like most children do.
Or is it all in Blythe’s head? Her husband, Fox, says she’s imagining things. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well.
Then their son Sam is born–and with him, Blythe has the blissful connection she’d always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fall-out forces Blythe to face the truth.

My Review: 4 stars

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The Push definitely pushed my boundaries as a reader (listener, in this case) as I was stretched, pulled and wrapped up into this story. Remember folks, I do very few thrillers and this one had me utterly uncomfortable, yet I couldn’t look away. I needed to know what was going to happen to these characters.

This book goes in deep on postpartum, mental health, marriage and inherited behavior patterns. The actions of both Blythe with her mother and her mother with her grandmother show little regard for concern, love or kindness. The flashbacks with them often left the reader confused as to whom she was referring to. I believe it spoke to the universally bad circumstances that can happen between mother and child as a generality.

As Blythe and Fox (such great character names) go on to have their own daughter, Violet, the reader is never sure if Blythe is unreliable, if Violet is psychotic, or both? As soon I jumped on one way of thinking, a twist would swing me back like a pendulum, especially after Sam was born.

Thank goodness for the epilogue; it was needed and appreciated. This book lived up to the insane amount of hype.

Quotes I liked:

We could have counted our problems on the petals of the daisy in my bouquet, but it wouldn’t be long before we were lost in a field of them.”

“A mother’s heart breaks a million ways in her lifetime.”

“Marriages can float apart. Sometimes we don’t notice how far we’ve gone until all of a sudden, the water meets the horizon and it feels like we’ll never make it back.”