Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

I just finished The Mad Widows by Scott Moore last night and what a wild ride of a book! The whole time I was reading this book, I kept thinking, “It’s like I’m reading a screenplay!” I could actually picture what was going even if I couldn’t clearly put a face on any of the four female main characters.

I also kept thinking all the way through this book that this storyline seemed so realistic (up until a certain point), as the crushing grief these women experienced was radiating off of the screen of my Kindle.

Either I’m psychic or just having a really good month of reading, but I was 100% right on both accounts.

First of all, this debut novel—not yet published—has already been optioned by MGM Television for development as a potential series!

Secondly, the idea for this plot feels realistic because it is. Author Moore’s good friend Nora McInerny experienced much of what the characters in The Mad Widows experienced and a good bit more. As many writers do—myself included—to climb out of something troubling, she wrote about it. Her two books It’s Okay to Laugh (Crying is Cool Too) and No Happy Endings were her ticket out of the crushing grief of losing her husband to cancer.

She apparently also has a podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking. Moore acknowledges all of this at the end of the novel, noting that he first met Nora when working on the novel adaptation of his movie Bad Moms. Yes, you read that correctly, the novel came after the movie.

That brings us to the slightly misleading description of this book as a debut novel. While this may be the first novel Moore has written, he is by no means unknown in the entertainment world. He, along with his writing and directing partner Jon Lucas, wrote and directed Bad Moms and The Hangover among others. And because he obviously has a talent for the visual aspect of storytelling, he was lucky enough that transferred to his writing as well.

The main idea of this novel is that the four women, who met in a grief counseling therapy group, meet for coffee each week and one week, Jenn says that she saw her dead husband. Kate says that she thought she saw her dead husband at the baggage claim area at the airport. Jenn however has evidence from her Ring security camera. A male figure with the same build as her dead husband Mikey is captured on her camera doing yard work at her house in the dead of night. Kate shares that her dead husband somehow “liked” a very old Instagram post of hers, and mysteriously, her long overdue and dangerously high water bill was paid in full. Madcap behavior of the Mad Widows ensues to try to unsolve the mystery of dead Mikey’s supposed suicide.

By now, you may know that my literary pet peeve is stories that fall apart at the end, as though the author runs out of steam, just writing anything to get over the finish line. This story holds together right to the end, which is why I gave it a whopping 5 stars. Is it fine literary fiction? NO. Will it be shortlisted for the Pulitzer? NO. Was it 100% enjoyable right until I clicked on the very last page? YES.

Okay, a few qualms. First of all, these women get themselves into all sorts of dangerous situations, and Kate, the head of this group of misfits whose only common thread is a dead spouse, seems to forget she is a single mom of two young children and takes all sorts of risks. She also forgets that her one contribution to the household income is thrifting and reselling items online. She is NOT a private eye or a police detective.

She also gets involved romantically with not one but two men she knows absolutely nothing about and dances around entanglement with organized crime. I don’t know…some of it seemed…a bit farfetched. But, this is fiction, I kept reminding myself, and it is, as I said, a wild ride of a book.

Secondly, the language in this book is definitely over the top. I recently commented to a friend that I enjoyed all three seasons of Apple TV’s Shrinking starring Harrison Ford, but when did the “f” word become as common as any preposition, adjective or verb? Scott Moore is no exception in this regard. This novel, if it makes it to the small screen, will not be on network TV as it is currently written. But, again, a wild ride of a book!

Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster, and Scott Moore for this ARC ebook! I can’t wait to see who plays the parts of Kate, Molly, Jenn, and Darlene on screen!