Wild Game: A Book Review

I saw a popular podcaster recommend Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me by Adrienne Brodeur and the premise seemed interesting enough. 
Without spoilers, it's about the author's relationship with her mother, who was privy to her mother's affair with a friend of the family. 

Now- some spoilers will be necessary in my review of the book. 
(If you want the BLUF- Overall, a good read but not a must-read. 3/5.)

Essentially, this is a story about a young girl in which her identity becomes wrapped up in trying to please her mother and keep the affair ongoing. The author even came up with a plan to help her mother, Malabar, & the other man, Ben, when someone attempted to blackmail her mother. The whole time I was reading the story, I kept thinking how much the name Malabar sounded like a Disney villain. This isn't meant to be an insult towards the actual person- just that the name sounds like it belongs to someone powerful, but also dangerous. 

The author, "Rennie", finds herself starved for her mother's love and attention to the point where it seems like she doesn't have much else going for her in her life. Even as Rennie finds love (er- it's her mother's lover's son) and marries the man, her wedding unexpectedly becomes vehicle for her mother to appear irresistible to Ben, her now father-in-law, who earlier confessed to his own wife about the affair and to save his marriage, stopped seeing Malabar.

Rennie finds herself in therapy and starts to recognize her need for her own identity. She separates from her husband, moves to NYC, but still disappoints her mother no matter what she does. She divorces her husband (and step-brother, because Malabar eventually did marry the man she was having an affair after both respective spouses died), and meets a new man who doesn't come from such a complicated family. Even as Rennie becomes a mother herself, she seeks this unconditional love from Malabar, thinking her own daughter could help mend that relationship. 

The story was interesting (my mother and I have a very different relationship than Rennie & Malabar) but it seemed like it was missing an emotional catharsis. The work she had made with her psychiatrist seemed to have stopped when she moved to NYC, and I can't help but to wonder if she had continued with therapy that her memoir could have packed even more of a punch. 

Overall, a good read but not a must-read. 3/5.