Book Review: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by Jessica Guerrieri
A dark and honest story about alcoholism, the struggles mothers often have with identity, and everything that comes with the sacrifices we make for our family, check out my full review of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by Jessica Guerrieri below!
Book Information
Leah O’Connor feels like she’s losing herself in between the constant pull of motherhood and its requirements. Not only does she feel like she’s always in the shadow of her mother-in-law, but her husband is constantly working on the restaurant he’s dreamed of building his whole life. The only problem with that is Leah’s dreams fall into the background as she’s tasked with everything that comes with parenting three children. So, Leah begins drinking more and more, and what once was a casual glass of wine has turned into a bottle… or two.
Review | Heidi Dischler
This was a difficult read for me. Not only because of the sensitive subject matters included in this novel, but because of many things that made this novel just a little hard to swallow. While I think it’s a beautiful portrayal of being able to find yourself after getting lost in motherhood, I also found the main character, Leah, to be absolutely insufferable at times.
So, let me start with the plot and pacing. This novel starts out extremely slowly. I feel like I didn’t know the story’s true purpose until well on my way past 50% of the novel. Not only that, but the plot is largely inner monologues from Leah and the memories from her past that she often returns to in her head. Once you got to probably about 60% through, though, the pacing picks up considerably. Before that, unfortunately, the novel dragged on quite a bit for me especially without a clear plot to follow.
With the characters, like I mentioned above, Leah was intolerable at times. The entire novel, all she does is talk about how much she hates her mother-in-law, Christine. I felt bad for Christine because Leah was honestly just hating her and being mean to her for what felt like no reason. Thank goodness the ending was decent because I couldn’t have taken all that hate and the grudges for that long without a satisfying ending. My favorite character in this whole novel was probably Amy, and she’s just a side character. I get that Leah was dealing with her alcoholism, but she was just so unlikable that there were many times I just wanted to stop reading.
Overall, this book was a little hard for me to get through. Now, do I think this is a bad book? Absolutely not. It just wasn’t for me and I could not for the life of me get past Leah’s attitude or the slow pacing. The ending was satisfying and it was a relatively quick read. 2.5 out of 5 rounded up to 3 for social platforms. Huge thank you to Harper Muse and Wunder Kind PR for reaching out to offer me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
Source: Advanced Reader Copy from WunderKind PR and Harper Muse
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