MoMoBookDiary

---

---

The Book:

When we move to the exclusive Cutters Island, my life changes overnight.

Dressed like the perfect wife, pushing my baby down the street in her pink stroller, I look up and smile at the security cameras.

Because I know they are watching.

And for now, I need to play my part.

I wake up in my beautiful bedroom and instinctively feel for my husband. But the silk sheets are cold—he hasn’t come home. Reaching for the baby monitor on my nightstand, I scan the screen for the familiar shape of my sleeping daughter. But she’s not there.

Moving through the house in the darkness, I tell myself the footage is just grainy. I pass the large window over the stairs, and see a light on in my mother-in-law’s house across the street, as if she is watching. The thought sends a chill down my spine and I start to run. And as I open my daughter’s bedroom door, my worst fear comes true: my baby is gone.

As I collapse onto the carpet, I smell smoke. And when I turn to see flames licking at the banister, I know this is my fault.

 I am paying for what happened that night all those years ago…

Because I am not a perfect wife. I am not a good mother. But I am the perfect liar.

No one knows what I have been through to get this life. 

And they shouldn’t underestimate how far I’ll go to get my baby back…

The Book Tour

---

My thoughts on Good Bad Mother

Some books pull you in, some grip you, and then there are those rare ones that completely consume you—Good Bad Mother by Anya Mora is one of them. From the very first page, I was drawn into Amelia’s world, a life built on secrets, survival, and the desperate need to fit into a place she never truly belonged.

Amelia and her husband, Timothy, live on the exclusive Cutter’s Island, surrounded by power, wealth, and an unshakable hierarchy ruled by Timothy’s parents, Alexander and Isabelle Sterling. The Sterlings are the kind of family that thrives on control, influence, and the carefully constructed image of perfection. Even Lydia, Timothy’s sister, remains under their grasp, still living in the family home, bound by expectation. But Amelia? She’s the outsider. The unwelcome addition. The woman they had to tolerate but never accept. And the way Anya Mora captures that tension—the sheer unease of existing in a space where you are so clearly unwanted—is masterful.

From the outside, Amelia appears to have the perfect life. A devoted husband. A beautiful baby, Clover. A home on an island where security cameras blink down at her every move. But from the moment she wakes up to an empty crib and the acrid scent of smoke creeping into her room, the illusion shatters. Her baby is gone. And just like that, her past—one she has fought so hard to bury—threatens to surface.

This book is twisted in the best possible way. It toys with the reader, leading you down one path before revealing, with breathtaking precision, that you were never on solid ground to begin with. I don’t want to give anything away, because to experience this book is to feel every gut-punch revelation as it unfolds. But let me just say—the twist? Absolute perfection. The way everything unravels left me speechless. It’s the kind of story that forces you to rethink everything you’ve read, making a second read almost irresistible just to catch all the subtle clues you missed the first time.

Beyond the gripping plot, Anya Mora’s writing is stunning. The atmosphere of Cutter’s Island—the claustrophobic wealth, the oppressive power struggles, the sheer isolation—feels so vivid, it’s like stepping into a psychological maze where every turn leads to more unease. Amelia’s perspective is so well written that you feel her paranoia, her desperation, her fear. You know she doesn’t belong in the Sterling family’s world, and yet, she’s trapped in it.

I read this in a single sitting, unable to tear myself away. It was so much better than I expected, and I went in with high hopes! If you love thrillers that are deeply unsettling, masterfully deceptive, and packed with jaw-dropping twists, then Good Bad Mother is an absolute must-read.

I already want to read it again now that I know how it ends—just to see exactly where my thoughts went wrong.

I went into Good Bad Mother expecting a gripping thriller, but what I got was something so much more. It’s psychological suspense at its finest—intelligent, utterly immersive, and with one of the most satisfying twists I’ve read in a long time. If you love books that play mind games with you, that make you question every assumption, that leave you thinking long after you’ve turned the final page—this is an absolute must-read.

But trust me: don’t assume you know where this book is going. You don’t. And that’s what makes it brilliant.

---

Sincere thanks to Sarah Hardy, Bookouture, and NetGalley for providing the digital advanced reader copy of this novel and having me on this Virtual Book Tour.

All views expressed are my own. This review, or parts of it, may also be shared on my social media channels and various book platforms. Links are accurate at the time of publication.

#GoodBadMother #AnyaMora #Bookouture #BooksOnTour #NetGalley #digitalarc #bookreview #ScottishBookstagrammer #BookstagramScotland #VirtualBookTour