Thursday, August 07, 2025

Six novels where competitive parenting goes off the rails

Jennifer Jabaley is the award-winning author of Lipstick Apology and Crush Control. She won Georgia Author of the Year in the young adult category and was nominated for the Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice Award. Jabaley is a practicing optometrist. She brings sharp focus to eye care by day and to storytelling by night. She lives in the north Georgia mountains with her sports-obsessed family and two rescue dogs.

Jabaley's new novel is What's Yours Is Mine.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six novels that depict various worlds of cutthroat parenting. One title on the list:
Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

Moriarty, in my opinion, really kicked off the trend of books about hyper competitive parents. This book, deceptively breezy, is a brilliant take on schoolyard scandals, mommy cliques, particularly the working mothers versus the stay-at-home moms, and little lies to keep up appearances that can turn lethal.

When one child is accused of being a bully, mothers immediately take sides and battlegrounds are formed. We see how little divisions can pit people against each other and stir a silent warfare.

This is one of my all-time favorite novels and one of the rare few that the TV series lives up to the original work.
Read about another entry on the list.

Big Little Lies is among Sandra Chwialkowska's five books where bad things happen in beautiful places, Jamie Day's seven crime books featuring special events going off the rails, Ashley Audrain’s six great thrillers featuring manipulative mom-friends, Nicole Hackett's six top mysteries about motherhood & crime, Janice Hallett's five notable gripping mysteries set in small towns, Tracy Dobmeier and Wendy Katzman's six riveting titles of ultra-competitive parents, Pamela Crane's five novels featuring parenting gone wild, Michelle Frances's eight top workplace thrillers, and Jeff Somers's ten novels that teach you something about marriage.

--Marshal Zeringue