The Mother

Blanchard (The Peacekeeper) spins a dark and occasionally confusing Handmaid’s Tale–esque thriller set in an alternate present in which England is a poor, backward island nation and Europe is controlled by a deeply misogynistic Holy Roman Empire. Marie, Duchess of Suffolk, grabs a collection of jewels and fakes her own death to escape her husband’s bleak Grayside estate and seek out her mother, whose own suicide Marie suspects was similarly faked in the wake of her inability to give Marie’s father a male heir. Marie travels to London to reunite with her street-savvy sister Emma and continue her search, all while avoiding John Hart, her mother-in-law’s manservant, who has been sent to bring her back. The worldbuilding feels sloppy, especially around the sporadic availability of technology: married women’s access to cell phones is heavily limited by WifeLock technology, but paper phone books still list unmarried women; meanwhile, though the internet exists, it somehow plays no part in tracking people down. Still, the fond relationships between Marie and her family, contrasted with the unsubtle evil machinations of her husband’s family, make rooting for these refugee women exciting and easy. Readers who can look past some shoddy construction will enjoy this dystopian thrill ride. (May)