Love, Mom – Iliana Xander

A best-selling author. A mother. A murderer…

Mackenzie Casper is a brilliant student. But she is best known for her mother, a best-selling author whose dark, twisted thrillers have a dedicated worldwide fanbase.

When her mother dies in an accident, fans across the world are left grieving, and the investigators are asking: Was that really an accident?

The day of the memorial service, Mackenzie gets the first mysterious envelope, signed,
From #1 fan. XOXO

Inside are the pages of her mother’s diary that start with the lines: 
Want to know a secret?
Love, Mom.

What Mackenzie reads leaves her in shock.
But then comes the second letter.
And the third…

Mackenzie starts her own investigation and stumbles upon secrets that her family has lived with for years.
Quickly, she realizes that her mother’s path to stardom was etched with sinister lies that might have caught up with her.

Sometimes fame is worth a murder. Or worse.
Soon, Mackenzie will come to find out that there are worse things than murder…

Review

This book went into a darker direction than I thought… which, of course, I loved.

We mostly read from Mackenzie’s POV, the daughter of a really famous best-selling author whose death kickstarts a chain of events and revelations that make Kenzie start to wonder: What actually happened to her mother, Lizzy Casper? Who was she, really? And who wrote those letters that appeared out of nowhere?

The book is divided into three parts. In the first one, the space was a little slow, but once the change of POVs started in Part 2, the pace picked up and never went flat. 

I was expecting something else / something more about the identity of the sender of the letters. It felt a bit too random, like the author wanted to tie everything in a perfect knot, which made some things a bit weird.

Still a great book; I like the author’s ideas.

4 / 5!

Special thanks to the author for a signed copy!