Rose Gold was a sick child. She spent an inordinate amount of time at doctor's’ offices and in hospitals. She had to be home-schooled, because being in school was too stressful. She couldn’t keep food down, so she had a feeding tube. She wasn’t strong enough to walk, so she used a wheelchair. She didn’t have a lot of friends. She didn’t get to do the things that kids normally did growing up—playing on the swings, passing notes in class, going to prom. But she loved her mom, and her mom loved her. They were two peas in a pod.
And then Rose Gold stumbled on the truth.
She wasn’t sick. She didn’t have food allergies or gluten sensitivities or the chromosomal deficiency that her mother told her about. Her mother had been poisoning her for Rose Gold’s entire life. She was simply malnourished and not given the chance to thrive.
There was an arrest, and then a trial, and then her mother went to jail. It seems like the story should end there. But it’s just the beginning.
As Rose Gold’s mother Patty gets out of prison, she finds herself without a friend in the world. Except one: her daughter, Rose Gold. Even though it was her damning testimony in the courtroom that put Patty in jail, after a couple of years, she and Rose Gold reconnected. Now Rose Gold has a son, Adam, and Patty can’t wait to meet her grandson.
Darling Rose Gold is a crazy thriller based loosely on the true story of DeeDee Blanchard and her daughter Gypsy. Author Stephanie Wrobel gets into the minds of these characters, of both a perpetrator and a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and creates a compelling, chilling, even creepy story of a mother-daughter relationship gone terribly wrong.
Told in chapters that alternate between Patty’s time after being released from prison and Rose Gold’s time while Patty was in jail, Darling Rose Gold puts the piece together in a way that is compelling, surprising, and definitely twisty.
I enjoyed the pace of this book, but I couldn’t help but feel there was something inherently distasteful about the story behind the story, and for that reason I kept setting this book aside from time to time. But once I got to the end, I was glad I’d finished it. The ending is satisfying, but you have to be able to put up with a lot of creepiness in order to get there. This book isn’t for everyone, but those who like genuinely spine-chilling stories will find happiness here.
Galleys for Darling Rose Gold were provided by Berkley through Edelweiss, with many thanks.