Review: Mad Mabel

Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4.5 Stars

This was a very unique book in that it was sad, funny, grim, weep-inducing, amusing, frustrating and giggle-worthy.

This is going to be a perfect beach read and an excellent book club choice. There is much to discuss with this novel.

Set in Australia, this book is written with two different time lines called--Now and Then.

Mad Mabel is called such because she was supposed to have committed murder; according to gossip, it may have been multiple murders, but who knows when it is just gossip...or is it?

Mabel finally decides to tell her story to two young people who have a TikTok channel and have been researching Mabel (who now calls herself Elsie). She opens up to them, and the whole story comes out. Meanwhile, there is a death in her neighborhood, and her 'Mad Mabel' name comes forth, and all hell breaks loose.

There are side-characters that are having issues, and Mabel steps up to the plate, no matter how cranky and grumpy she is about it.

I have to admit I did find myself doing a little weeping during the last several chapters, but overall I loved this book.

*ARC Supplied by the publisher St. Martin's Press, the author, and NetGalley.


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SUMMARY: "There are two kinds of people no one ever expects to be murderers: 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."