Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Six riveting titles of ultra-competitive parents

Tracy Dobmeier and Wendy Katzman have been great friends for over 20 years. Their friendship has sustained them through the ups and downs of motherhood, careers, and life’s many curveballs. Their debut novel, Girls with Bright Futures, is a dark, suspenseful journey into the cutthroat world of college admissions. Between the two of them, they have undergraduate degrees from Princeton University and the University of Michigan, a law degree from UC Berkeley, careers in marketing, non-profit leadership and biotechnology law, two husbands, and four kids (three of whom have survived the college admissions process without a single parent landing in jail).

At CrimeReads they tagged six "books featuring parents who claim to want the best for their children, but who somehow convince themselves that their lies, schemes, or worse, are justified in the service of their kids’ bright futures." One title on the list:
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

No roundup of competitive-parenting thrillers would be complete without the inclusion of Big Little Lies. A father dies at a boozy school trivia night. Was it an accident? Or murder? The police investigation reveals the battle lines drawn within the gossipy school community over a kindergarten bullying incident months earlier pitting the victim’s high-powered mother against the single-mother newcomer whose son stands accused. The fangs come out as the mothers seek to protect their precious children while keeping their own secrets and lies buried.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Big Little Lies is among Pamela Crane's five novels featuring parenting gone wild, Michelle Frances's eight top workplace thrillers, and Jeff Somers's teen novels that teach you something about marriage.

--Marshal Zeringue