REVIEW: Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth

 

OUR REVIEW:

I've seen Sally Hepworth's books floating around the book-verse for a while now and I've been curious, but it was the first sentence of this novel that grabbed my attention. In chapters that alternate between the present and the past, we learn why she's called "Mad Mabel" and how she's become the grouchy old woman she is. Spoiler alert: she's completely entitled to be grouchy and yet she's really not-she really has a soft heart-the heart of someone who desperately wants to love and be loved. Her backstory is grisly and the experiences she had, nightmarish, and yet she lived to become a beloved member of her street and, eventually, her world. 

While not earthshatteringly revelatory, it was an interesting read.

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SYNOPSIS:There are two kinds of people no one ever expects to be: little girls and old ladies.

Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick is eighty-one years old. She's lived on her idyllic street for sixty years—longer than anyone else. Aside from being a curmudgeon who minds everyone else's business, few would suspect that Elsie has a past she's worked exceedingly hard at concealing—because when it comes to murder, no one ever suspects little girls or old ladies. And Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick, once a little girl and now an old lady, has a strange history of people in her life coming to a foul end.