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The first days of motherhood are wonderful and exhausting and stressful. New moms suddenly find themselves trying to figure out how to care for this beautiful new child while managing the changes in all aspects of their lives. And in author Emma Robinson’s The Undercover Mother, one woman finds herself turning to some unlikely new friends for support.
The story begins as magazine columnist Jenny is preparing for the birth of her first child. When Jenny’s beloved Girl about Town column is handed over to one of her colleagues, Jenny has to find a way to stay relevant—so she signs herself and her husband up for a birthing class in an attempt to find exciting things to write about motherhood. Though she’s just looking for a few moms to write about, she ends up building friendships with a group of very different women who have one big thing in common.
No one is fully prepared for the ups and downs of motherhood: the overwhelming love for your child, the fear that you’ll do something wrong, the sheer exhaustion. Moms feel pulled in every direction, pressured to do it all, trying to be the best wife, mother, friend, and worker they can be. And the author expresses all of those emotions in this light and sometimes laugh-out-loud novel, focusing more on the moms than on motherhood in general. The women here all struggle—and, as moms often do, they open up about their struggles to other women who are going through the same things.
If you’ve spent any time with moms, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll recognize many of them in the characters in this book. Jenny’s new friends run the gamut of new moms: the happy hippie mom, the all-business mom, the pampered mom who keeps everything in her life perfect with help from her nanny. And then there’s Jenny: the mom in sweats and a messy ponytail who’s completely overwhelmed and just trying to survive. Since there are five of them, they aren’t all fully developed—but most of them are developed enough to make the story work. And, as Jenny learns throughout her months with the other moms, there’s much more to them than just the stereotypes. Their stories are filled with drama and mystery and scandal. And while some of the storylines get caught up in the usual chick lit formulas, it’s light and funny yet sometimes surprisingly real, too.
Whether you’re a new mom or a seasoned pro, The Undercover Mother is the kind of book that you’ll want to share with your own mommy friends. It’s an easy-going read that’s both amusing and relatable.
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