PROM MOM

4 stars out of 5

This story follows the lives of four main characters, and although the plot itself is totally engrossing and entertaining, not a single one of the four characters had any redeeming social value, at least to me. There's Joe, who abandoned his tutor-turned-lover, Amber, on prom night when his ex-girlfriend beckoned him back to her arms. There's Amber, forever to be identified a a girl who killed her newborn baby on that same prom night. There's Meredith, a reconstructive surgeon, whose troubled background makes her an uber-neurotic wife to Joe. And finally, there's Jordan, a petulant but beautiful young thing who's determined to take Joe away from Meredith and Amber.

Needless to say, all four ar
e on a collision course; but how their lives are entertwined, when those tendrils will start to unravel and what the fates have in store is the stuff of which a juicy story is concocted. 

Chapters shift in time so readers can get peeks into what conspired to tie these four together, starting with that fateful prom night when Joe abdicated his responsibility for taking care of Amber, who clearly was in distress. Sure, they weren't destined for marriage and neither realized she was even pregnant, much less about to deliver the baby (go figure - I've got no clue). But both have moved on; Joe to marry Meredith and Amber to live a relatively happy life that now includes relocating from New Orleans to Baltimore to open an art shop.

Joe, however, is miserable; his financial life in Baltimore is in shambles (mostly of his own making, and unknown to Meredith), and he still feels guilt over what happened on prom night all those years ago. To ease the troubles, none of which really are his fault, he's prone to straying to other women's beds, most notably Jordan's. Then as fate would have it, he spots Amber's art shop, and Amber, and the race to the finish begins in earnest.

What that finish will be, though, isn't known till the end, which is a doozy. No doubt readers will differ as to which of the four should have had which comeuppance - personally, I didn't like any of them, so I wasn't rooting for anyone in particular. But their trip was well worth reading about - from somewhere around midpoint on, I had trouble putting it down. I thank the publisher, via NetGalley, for letting me ride along by way of a pre-release copy. Good one!

Prom Mom by Laura Lippman (William Morrow, July 2023); 312 pp.