When Your Mother Doesn't

A Novel

By: Jill Kelly

Narrated by: Jill Kelly PhD

A Revealing and Intimate Story of What a Mother Will - and Will Not - Do for Her Daughters

What kind of women do daughters become when their fathers are missing and their mothers can't love them? How do they find love and ways to love themselves?

Nearly three decades of secrets lie between Lola Ashby and the two girls she reluctantly raised. Now, prompted by the one father figure she respects, older daughter Frankie agrees to drive from Portland to visit her ailing mother, who abandoned the girls when they were in high school. When younger daughter Callie announces to Frankie that she's moving her fashion-model career to Los Angeles from the East Coast, Frankie badgers her sister into meeting up in the Idaho panhandle for a family reunion to dilute the impact of their mother's indifference.

However, on Frankie's first night on the road, the trip gets more complicated when a well-dressed elderly woman at a rest stop dumps a young boy in her lap with a request to take him on to Montana. And Callie's exit from Pittsburgh is fraught with its own shady and violent difficulties. Meanwhile Lola strengthens her resolve to keep the past and its secrets where they belong.

©2015 Jill Kelly (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

A little hard to follow, but good story!

It was a little hard to follow jumping around from past to present and back into the past - but I thought the story was interesting.

Disappointed

I really liked the story but I didn't like the way it ended. It left you hanging. It seemed liked there should have a sequel but I couldn't find find one.

Left hanging!

I felt like the author suddenly got tired of her own story and just wrapped it up with so many unanswered questions. I was totally invested in the story and then nothing

Confusing

Too much switching of time. Depressing lives, lousy ending. I hate endings that leave you wondering what happened.

Beautifully written but truly depressing

I feel sad to say this was not a good read after being locked at home for over a year during a pandemic. The narrator, who is also the writer, had the tone and cadence perfect for the depressing story.