The Mothers Group by Fiona Higgins

‘All those things no one ever tells you about motherhood. It’s like secret mothers’ business. Lots of my friends had babies before me, but not one of them ever told me it would be this hard…It’s like a code of silence.’

The Mothers’ Group tells the story of six very different women who agree to meet regularly soon after the births of their respective babies.

Set during the first crucial year of their babies’ lives, The Mothers’ Group tracks the women’s individual journeys – and the group’s collective one – as they navigate birth and motherhood as well as the shifting ground of their relationships with their partners.

The Mother’s Group is brilliant. From the first pages the story drags you in. From its brutal honesty about motherhood and all its challenges to the uglier sides of our own personalities. This book really doesn’t hold back. At times its easy to put your judgemental hat on and feel quite superior about how far above this group you are. Until you realise with somewhat disturbing clarity; you are in fact exactly like these women.

You do the wrong things, you make the wrong choices, you feel downtrodden and as though the world is against you. And you definitely judge. But the beauty of Fiona Higgins writing is that even with all that recognition, it never makes you feel bad, just human.

As the story evolves you are drawn into the complex and at times very confronting lives of this group of women. They are not women who would choose to be friends. They are thrown together through circumstance, motherhood is the one tie that binds them together but it could also be the one thing that will drive them apart.

From the first few chapters The Mother’s Group has a sense of impending drama and it doesn’t disappoint in that department. This is in its simplest form, a book about relationships, but it is so much more than that too. It has everything you could want from a really great thrilling read. It hurtles a long at an astonishing pace and doesn’t let up, all leading to a blinding climax that you will not see coming. There are so many twists and turns that it feels as though the book has nothing more left to shock you with but it just keeps delivering.

I cannot recommend this enough. As a mother to a young child this resonated on so many levels. As a woman it did too. The combined effect was mesmerising. I couldn’t stop reading Fiona Higgins and you wont either. This is one début author who will be around for a long time to come.

Courtney for TLC Books