{"id":3185,"date":"2023-09-28T16:02:52","date_gmt":"2023-09-28T16:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=3185"},"modified":"2023-10-12T16:36:40","modified_gmt":"2023-10-12T16:36:40","slug":"what-mother-wont-tell-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=3185","title":{"rendered":"What Mother Won\u2019t Tell Me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>This debut novel should come with blood-pressure pills.<\/strong> The tension at first comes from strangeness: Mother; Father; their daughter, Juno; and son, Boy live a harsh, homesteading life alone on an island. Is it the present day? What part of the world are they in? Is the mortal danger from outsiders that the parents warn about real? The timing element is all that\u2019s clear for a good portion of the book: it\u2019s the current day, but apart from visits from the mailman who comes from the mainland, during which Juno and Boy must hide from view, the rest is unknown. Bit by bit, teen Juno\u2019s desire for freedom and her determination to find out more about their situation despite her sinister, violent parents\u2019 \u201cseven commandments\u201d (including \u201cWe must always kill quickly and painlessly\u201d) ramp up the fear to a terrifying do-or-die scene. Readers will be rapt as they race to the end to find out who survives this nightmare that\u2019s effectively mixed with a fairytale motif echoing one of Juno\u2019s favorite stories. Menger\u2019s previous work is in film, TV, and audiobooks: try his Audible Originals <em>Monster 1983<\/em> and <em>Ghostbox<\/em> while you wait for this gripping thriller.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This debut novel should come with blood-pressure pills. The tension at first comes from strangeness: Mother; Father; their daughter, Juno; and son, Boy live a harsh, homesteading life alone on&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[163,59,52,50,51],"class_list":["post-3185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-book-of-the-week","tag-literary","tag-psychological","tag-suspense","tag-thrillers"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Mother-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Mother.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Henrietta Thornton","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=4"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}