The Push

Title: The Push
Author: Ashley Audrain
First Published: January 5, 2021
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
Pages: 320
Genre: Domestic Thriller, Family Drama, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller
Format: Hardcover
Source: Library
Rating:


Synopsis:

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.

The Push is a tour de force you will read in a sitting, an utterly immersive novel that will challenge everything you think you know about motherhood, about what we owe our children, and what it feels like when women are not believed.

Buy the Book: Amazon

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Review

I picked up The Push expecting another average thriller and it is certainly written like one, but I wasn’t expecting the massive gut punch as the story veered wildly into the realm of horror. The Push is first and foremost about motherhood, about the cycle of abuse and trauma that can plague a family, about a woman on the edge of madness when all of her worst fears about motherhood seemingly become a reality.

Blythe is frustrating, she is imperfect, she feels rejected by her daughter and rejects her in turn. She deals with the exhaustion of motherhood, the downward spiral into paranoia, of being treated like a hysterical woman, villainized, dismissed, and the center of blame. She questions herself and her mind if she could trust what she was seeing. This novel hurt in a very personal way, I couldn’t stand Blythe but I could understand her. I couldn’t put the book down, and my counselor-trained brain kept screaming at me as I knew what was happening, and I felt like I was on a collision course.

Even though I could predict the ending, I was left stunned that the author had the audacity to commit to such a dark outcome. I didn’t know what to think, but the author’s boldness paid off as I ended up rambling to my husband for over an hour about the book, I struggled to sleep I kept thinking about it. The novel is reminiscent of We Need to Talk About Kevin which I really appreciated, it stands out among the other psychological thrillers.

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About the Author