Thank you Random House Publishing and Netgalley for the opportunity to read an ARC of this book.

This novel was one I was really hopeful for, however it was not my cup of tea per se. I did enjoy the story line being about a child growing up after her mother was committed by her father to an insane asylum. The novel was kind of messy and all over the place for me to really follow it, but I know that some readers will really click with me. I would definitely give this author another try however. I did really like that the author took the spin of kind of relating how one person’s evil acts, impact a child rather than just other adults.

4.5 stars

When the first thing I see in a book is a character list, I get nervous. But somehow, it all ties together well in the end.

Like Mother Like Mother by Susan Rieger is a multi-generational story that calls into question if the consequences of a person’s actions (more specifically a parent’s) are truly their own. Stemming from an abusive father and an absent mother, the Perreira-Maier family, as well as the lives of those they touch, have to figure out what it truly means to be a family, and most importantly, a mother.

This book is beautifully written. Somehow, despite the large cast of characters, you’ll find yourself invested in every single one of them, even those who may seemingly be minor characters. The absentee mother (in more ways than one) is a central theme, and while you’re not guaranteed a happy ending with this book, you will get a satisfying one.

The only drawback is that the way the story is written can be a bit disjointed because of how many characters there are, and therefore how many POVs there are. It can get even more confusing towards the last third of the book, so you’ll want to get used to the unconventional third-person omniscient writing style early on.

Regardless, for those who are big fans of family stories, you’ll definitely want to pick this one up.

Special thanks to NetGalley and The Dial Press for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Like Mother Like Mother is available everywhere now.

A novel about three generations of ambitious women who put themselves first to the detriment of their children. I loved how the story was arranged. It jumped around in time, but not in a confusing way. Every character had a rich backstory that kept me invested in their development. It’s a complex story that at times made me uncomfortable but also pulled at the heart strings. Every family is complicated and Susan Rieger detailed this family beautifully. This book would be great for a book club to discuss. I highly recommend!

I will not be reading this book as I've only seen this author downplay her mistakes/poor choices in regards to plagiarism. A law degree and an ivy league education should be enough to not toy the line so closely and then to be so flippant about the allegations.

Susan Rieger has delivered a compelling book, ripe with discussion topics for Book Clubs. In it, she examines familial relationships—most centered on the mother.
I will not concentrate on the story itself, since most reviewers have done that already. These are the things that came into my thoughts as I read this book:
There are mothers who leave, others who are absent in spirit. How do absent, or non-participating, mothers affect the family dynamics? Is motherhood a learned thing, or is it hereditary? Can one who had no example to emulate be a good mother? Do sons handle the absence of a mother differently than daughters? How do fathers deal with these situations?
Rieger’s in-depth characterizations are masterful. She looks at three generations, from the abused mother to the successful career woman to the young children raised by their father. I was drawn to each of these characters and felt that they all had meaningful stories.
There is a fair amount of stereotyping here: a wealthy Jewish mother-in-law, bouncy blonde California daughters, unwed Southern mothers, to name a few. Rieger also used the roman a clef device here where it suits her. She uses real names for some of her political characters, fictional names for others. I was curious about why she chose this avenue.
This book will be a huge success. My thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for an advanced copy of this book. My opinions are my own.

Title: Like Mother, Like Mother
By: Susan Rieger
Pub. Date: October 29, 2024

Genre:
Fiction, Women’s

Red Flags:
Domestic Abuse, Child Abuse, Neglect,

Summary:
Lila Pereira's mother was committed to an asylum when Lila was only two years old, and she's never heard from or seen her since. However, Lila remains doubtful about what really happened. Did her father lie to her? Is her mother still alive?

Lila has built a successful career at The Globe, often prioritizing her work over her role as a mother. But it’s okay—her husband Joe is the perfect dad, playing both mother and father roles. He’s flawless.

Grace, one of Lila and Joe’s daughters, is trying to understand her mother’s distant and work-focused behavior. Why doesn’t Lila seem to care about her children? Why is work so important to her? Grace believes her mom’s actions are linked to the absence of her own mother, and she’s determined to uncover the truth about what happened to her grandmother.

Review:
Like Mother, Like Mother is told from multiple points of view, which requires smooth transitions for the plot to flow naturally. Unfortunately, this is where I found the story lacking. At several key moments, the transitions were confusing, and I had to backtrack to fully understand the story. However, the plot is fast-paced, suspenseful, and character-driven.

Thank you Susan Rieger, Random House Publishing Group, and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader Copy for free. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

#LikeMotherLikeMother
#SusanRieger
#RandomHousePublishingGroup
#reluctantreaderreads
#advancedreadercopies
#NetGalley

This book had so much promise; the first half of the book was great but it went downhill and never really recovered.

Like Mother, Like Mother by Susan Rieger is a story based on the fact that a person raised, or abandoned by her mother will assume some of the characteristics of motherhood from that experience. While I don’t believe in inherited trauma, this amazing story shows how trauma can travel, through experience, from one person to another. The story centers around Lila Pereira, a successful executive editor of the fictional Washington Globe. She births the daughters but her husband, Joe raises them. Joe loves her but even he tires of her obsession after years of living with it. Her lack of mothering skills is passed along, albeit differently to each, to her daughters. One daughter, Grace, who is a writer, becomes obsessed with her mother’s parents: an alcoholic, abusive father and a mother who, supposedly, died when Lila was very small. What she learns explains a lot about her mother.

This is a collection of interesting women, all of whom, related or not, became part of the story, which includes, abandonment: straight out, or through adoption; the love of surrogate mothers; and other childhood traumas. It is full of interesting situations and personas. These potentially damaged woman all found someone to love them and that is the saving grace of the damage their parents, accidentally or purposefully, imposed upon them. It is a wonderful story as well as a cautionary one. It is easy to get so involved with one’s own life that he/she can fail to see it from any other perspective or recognize the damage being done. Excellent piece of writing, but lest we forget, good things are learned from mothers, too.

I was invited to read Like Mother, Like Mother by Random House Publishing Group-Random House. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #Netgalley #RandomHousePublishingBroupRandomHouse #SusanRieger #LikeMotherLikeMother

This sent me into a bit of a slump. I loved the premise: three generations of mothers and how we inextricably affect our daughters. However, the third person POV felt too detached. I wanted more emotional connection with the women. Also, in the Grace chapters, I felt whiplash going between Grace and Ruth's life. I feel like it dwelled too much on Ruth when it was supposed to be about Grace? I liked her story, but it didn't fit with the premise or narrative of it being 3 generations of women from the same line.

A sweeping family drama spanning three generations. Three complex difficult women making choice that impact not only themselves but also those around them. I loved the banter between the characters (Ruth!) and the layers upon layers to better understand each of the women. But, this was longer than it needed to me and I wished sections 1 & 2 were shorter.

3.5 stars and rounding up.

Thank for the advanced reader copy Random House Publishing Group - Random House | The Dial Press and Netgalley.

Three generations of women and the relationship, or lack thereof, they had with each other. Broken into three parts. This is a sweeping story of family and how as much as you may try to not be life someone, the apple never falls far from the tree. The book explores the mother and daughter relationship at each stage of life and what it means to be there for family vs having a fulfilling career of our own.

Part 1- the glorious life of Lila. I was fascinated by her story. Her fierce determination, her no apologies attitude, her fight, her grit, her ability to make people talk. She was the editor for a major NY publication and known in her community. We learn she became this way after escaping abuse from her father and after her mother was institutionalized when she was 2 and presumably died. She met Joe at Michigan and got married. Joe wanted a family and Lila agreed as long as she didn’t have to do the work of a mother. The two older girls didn’t mind much but the younger, Grace, questioned Lila at every turn and every milestone.

Part 2- the youngest daughter Grace. Her relationship with her mom is explored and we also learn about her life growing up with the situation she was put in. We also are given her lovely friendship with Ruth, her freshman year roommate who became her person. Life after college, career changes, affairs, love. Whether she wants to be or not, Grace is more like Lila than she wants to be even if she believes herself to be her fathers daughter.

Part 3- The Quest for Zelda. What really happened to her all those years ago to Lila’s mother? Was she really insane? Did she really die? Did she run off to save herself and abandon her children? There were lots of questions going in and I was very satisfied with the result, even if it was a sad one.

Overall, this novel was one that awakened your inner fierceness and made you realize that even those who are well off, needed to earn their place and feel the need to belong. Being a mother is a gift and how one chooses to utilize that gift to pass on wisdom to their children might not always be the same as what society believes it to be.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Random House for sharing this book’s digital advanced review copy with me in exchange for an honest review.

This review will be run on Instagram @mycuppacoffee_books and on Goodreads. Expected post on November 14th.



This review will be run on Instagram @mycuppacoffee_books and on Goodreads. Expected post on November 14th.

This is a great exploration of how decisions of parents affect our lives and how we create families. I enjoyed the second half of the novel more than the 1st half. I am glad I kept reading but the perspective told from Lila’s viewpoint didn’t capture my attention the same way the story from Grace did. The mystery at the center of the story had me hanging on for the last 30% and I enjoyed it the best.

Like Mother, Like Mother is an easy to read, wonderful story of three generations of women. One mother left her young kids to get away from a terrible husband, leaving a daughter to endure his wrath. That daughter in turn left her daughter for her work with a father who loved and adored her. One daughter continued to search for her mother’s attention and affection. One daughter decided it was better if her mother was dead to her. I loved this book and highly recommend it!

A fascinating story centered around strong women, mothers, daughters, sisters and friends on a quest for the truth of their family's past. It is an exploration of the role of DNA searches that uncover secrets that in past generations, would have remained secrets. The author has created complex characters that face both their known past and the hidden past of their families. At times, the story was a bit difficult to follow, with its many characters and intertwined tales of the various past lives thought to be long buried. In the end, Susan Rieger has written a quite compelling exploration of difficult and complex issue of DNA testing and both the joy and the heartache it can entail. Thank you to the author, publisher and Netgalley for my advance copy. The opinions of my review are my own.

Like Mother, Like Mother is about 3 generations of mothers. We get an in depth look at each of the characters and they are all very complex and at times unlikeable.

I really liked the writing in this book. The dialogue was very witty and smart. There was a decent amount about politics which wasn’t ideal for me to read around a huge election but luckily that wasn’t the bulk of the story.

I found I really cared for the characters, flawed as they were. The ending was perfection and I loved the last part of the story most of all. At times I found the pacing slow but I always felt engaged with the story. I’d recommend this to anyone who likes books about family dynamics.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy.

📚Book Review: Like Mother Like Mother by Susan Reiger📚

Many thanks to NetGalley and The Dial Press for an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Lila Pereira is a force to be reckoned with. Following the institutionalization of her mother, she is raised in Detroit by an abusive single father and left with no choice but to forge her own path her entire life. As an adult, Lila has left the child rearing of her 3 girls to her endearing husband, Joe, as she climbs the ranks to become one of the most notable newspaper editors in the country. As Lila achieves her dreams, her girls feel overshadowed and hungry for their mother’s love, especially the youngest daughter, Grace. It seems that the more overlooked Grace is, the harder she works to garner her mother’s attention. When she decides to write a fictional book loosely based on her mother’s upbringing, not only does she finally grasp her mother’s attention, but she also opens the door to an unsolved family mystery that could have severe ramifications on all of her family members.

🌹I absolutely loved this book from beginning to end. Generational family sagas are right up my alley and this did not disappoint!
🌹I loved the dynamics amongst all of the family members and how Lila’s story of growing up was woven into the story of her daughters’ upbringings.
🌹This book made me think a lot about how generational trauma can affect a family and is it possible to break the cycle of trauma?
🌹I know there was some speculation surrounding the author’s use of other people’s words and improperly acknowledging their words, but I chose to just maintain my focus on enjoying the book.

The complicated relationships between mothers and daughters

When Lila Pereira and her siblings were young their mother Zelda left them. Their father, the brutish and abusive Aldo, had her admitted to the Eloise Asylum for what he said was her emotional instability and there, he told them several years later, she died. With Zelda no longer in the house to be the recipient of his physical and mental abuse, he turned his rage onto his children. Lila was the youngest but the most stubborn, and she made sure that her defiant attitude and sharp tongue directed Aldo’s anger towards her rather than her siblings. Their hardscrabble upbringing, their lack of a mother and their father’s abusive nature would affect all three in different ways. Lila grew up to become a famed newspaper editor in Washington DC and married the wealthy Joe Maier. They had three daughters because Joe wanted children; Lila did not believe she could ever be a proper parent to a child given her own upbringing, and agreed to have children only if Joe (and whatever nannies etc he might need) raised them, a condition to which he agreed. For their three girls, Stella and Ava aka the Starbirds and especially for the youngest girl Grace, having a mother who seemed to care more for her career than for them created their own version of an absent mother. While Joe was an amazing and loving father and Lila did love them all in her own way, Grace grew up and remained angry that she did not have the type of mother she felt she deserved. When Lila dies unexpectedly within months of retiring from her job, her family is devastated, none more so than Grace who was left with unresolved issues. Lila left behind a letter, asking Grace to research what really happened to Zelda all those decades ago. Did she in fact die at the Eloise? Or did she find a way to escape, leaving her three young children behind to suffer from the abuse she would surely have known was their fate?
All children are affected by how they are raised, and while there is no perfect parent some children are lucky enough to be raised with love and kindness. Others, like Lila and her two siblings, draw the short end of the stick in that particular lottery. Lila’s intelligence and ambition raised her out of the blue collar Jewish neighborhood in Chicago where she was raised and catapulted her into a life where she mingled with the social and political elite, a person whose obituary was featured on the front page of not only the Washington Globe (where she had been the executive editor) but also the New York Times. But that same drive and dedication to her career left little time for her to be a mother to her children or even a proper wife to the husband she loved. As Grace looks into her family’s history in her search for the truth about Zelda, she finds many surprises as well as uncanny parallels between the women that Zelda and Lila were, and what she herself might become. Told with humor and honesty, it was hard for me as a reader not to admire the woman that Lila became even as it broke my heart to see what the damage done to her caused her to miss out on with her family. She did experience love and friendship, and did her best to be a mother to her daughters (she certainly gave them the very best father a child could ever want). The relationship between mother and daughter is fraught with land mines in the best of circumstances, and neither Lila nor her girls would claim to have that….but each made the best of what they had, and tried to do better. Wonderful characters, full of flaws but with spirit and fire galore, and the layered relationships between the people who would come together to form an extended family through blood, marriage, and friendship, this story of three generations of women is beautifully told. Fans of authors like Anne Tyler, Allegra Goodman and Julia Glass would be wise to add Like Mother Like Mother to their TBR list, as should any woman who is or has a mother. Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group/The Dial Press for allowing me access to this delightful saga.

Show me a multi-generational multi-year saga of a book and it's most likely I'll love it. Like Mother, Like Mother was no exception. This is a book of strong. sometimes dislikable, women. But i'm a firm believer that not every book character must be likeable for the book to be good.

It has been a long time since I've read a story that is a story just for its own sake. No moral. No teaching. No mea culpa. Just an interesting story spanning three generations. I was slow getting into the book but once I was hooked, it was hard to put down. With one exception, the men are nice, kind and the women mostly strong, forward looking action oriented people. There is a mystery that is solved by the end of the book.
I really enjoyed reading Like Mother, Like Mother. Even the title makes sense by the end!

A completely engrossing story of the lives of a mother, her daughter, and the mystery of her mother’s life. The conversations are short and to the point. The narration follows the same pattern. It is loaded with successes and disappointments. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and the format.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.