Darling Rose Gold
By: Stephanie Wrobel
Published Year: 2020
Publisher: Berkley
Pages:
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This in no way shape or form influenced my opinion of this book.
Summary (Provided by Goodreads): For the first eighteen years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair and practically lived at the hospital. Neighbors did all they could, holding fundraisers and offering shoulders to cry on, but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with Rose Gold.
Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar.
After serving five years in prison, Patty gets out with nowhere to go and begs her daughter to take her in. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes.
Patty insists all she wants is to reconcile their differences. She says she's forgiven Rose Gold for turning her in and testifying against her. But Rose Gold knows her mother. Patty Watts always settles a score.
Unfortunately for Patty, Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling...
And she's waited such a long time for her mother to come home.
First Impressions
The cover is a very pretty color and grabbed my eye. Then you look closer and it’s creepy. I’ve watched a lot of true crime shows and documentaries, so when I read the summary it reminded me of Mommy Dead and Dearest, which piqued my interest further.
What I thought
This book left me feeling so gross.
Rose Gold Watts grew up thinking that she was deathly ill. When she turned 16, she realized that her mother had been poisoning her to make her think that she was sick all along. Patty Watts has been in prison for 5 years, but when she gets out, Rose Gold picks her up and takes her home. Will they be able to put their past behind them? Or will old patterns repeat themselves?
The HBO documentary, Mommy Dead and Dearest, tells the story of a girl who was poisoned by her mother her entire life and made to believe that she was terribly sick but with no diagnosis of everything. She was wheelchair bound, lost her hair, and had a feeding tube. When she was a teenager, she accessed the internet and became suspicious that her mom was poisoning her after talking to her online boyfriend. She plots with her boyfriend to kill her mother, is successful in doing so, and went to prison.
I’m more than a little curious as to how this book has been allowed to be written considering how close it is to the real life story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard. I mean, even with the Rose reference with the name. The only real difference in this book versus the real story is that Patty is alive and Rose Gold gets revenge via other means that aren’t murder.
The story is a little confusing in that the chapters are written not only in alternating perspective, but in alternating timelines. Patty’s chapters are told from present day, whereas Rose Gold’s chapters start a year or so after Patty goes to prison. It adds to the disorientation of what is real and what is a mind game.
I think that the writing is good. The story moved along well and I was interested to see where it was going. There are some parts that seem like they don’t follow the same track and divert unnecessarily, but it always came back.
This book left me feeling so uncomfortable that I couldn’t rate it higher. They are both terrible people and I’m definitely not a “two wrongs make a right” type of person, so a lot of this book didn’t sit well with me. I think people who liked the Mommy Dead and Dearest documentary will enjoy this book. I’m curious to see what Wrobel writes next, because I did like her style.