Cathryn Grant, The Demise of the Soccer Moms (2010)

This American suspense novel is the writer´s debut.

“After a moment of silence, a thud shook the walls of the living room and the hallway outside Amy´s bedroom. Her mother yelped. Amy rolled onto her back. The walls shivered again. There was a thick, damp sound like the pounding of her mother´s meat tenderizer on a piece of beef.”

When Amy Lewis was a little girl, her mother was raped in their own living room. She was too terrified to do anything, but for the rest of her life she remembers her father´s verdict: if her mother hadn´t invited a stranger in or ´dressed like a slut´, nothing would ever have happened to her.

Afterwards Amy´s mother stops caring about clothes, make-up, food – even her two daughters. So when Amy grews up, she decides to create a perfect life for her own girls. She becomes one of the group of devout soccer moms in their pleasant Sunnyvale suburb.

When Charlotte, a budding photographer and the mother of Meadow, enters the scene, things change very quickly, however. “She wore a gauze skirt paired with Doc Marten boots that made her look like a hybrid of Tinker Bell and a thug.”

The outrageous newcomer who doesn´t even wear a bra sticks out a mile, and the soccer moms Amy, Rachel, Jane and Kit are less than pleased with this inchworm in their paradise.

When it comes to plot, it is difficult to say if the story is mainly about crimes against women, or about the long-term consequences of these. No matter what, I rushed through the book in a few hours. As I had expected, the suburban environment was well drawn, and I was intrigued by the small group of female characters, especially Amy and Charlotte who appear to be opposites.

I bought the Kindle version myself.

Global Reading Challenge # 1, North America.