BOOK REVIEW: Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel @berkleypub #darlingrosegold #bookreview

A total ripped-from-the-headlines thriller, Stephanie Wrobel’s Darling Rose Gold is a dark and gripping story of a mother, a daughter, and the complicated abuse that comes with Munchausen by proxy syndrome. You’ll have trouble putting this book down!

About the Book

For the first eighteen years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair and practically lived at the hospital. Neighbors did all they could, holding fundraisers but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with Rose Gold.

Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar.

After serving five years in prison, Patty begs her daughter to take her in. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes. And Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling…

And she’s waited such a long time for her mother to come home.

Reflection

This book reminds me a lot of the famous headline-grabbing case of Dee Dee Blanchard and her daughter Gypsy, which was probably one of the most famous cases of Munchausen by proxy documented publicly in my generation. It was even reenacted for a streaming series several years ago. While I don’t think this case alone was the inspiration for Darling Rose Gold, I’d guess it played a significant part in helping Wrobel understand how this mental illness plays out.

Unlike many mental illnesses, Munchausen by proxy refers specifically to a form of abuse where a parent or guardian (most common in mothers) makes their child believe they are sick as a form of gaining sympathy and meaning from that relationship. In Darling Rose Gold, we see this terrifying illness play out in flashbacks and the current timeline.

Rose Gold Watts spent nearly two decades believing she was sick when her mother Patty would use ipecac and other tactics to mimic symptoms of illness. Patty would poison Rose Gold, starve her, shave her head, and make her so weak that she was wheelchair bound for much of her life. Rose Gold eventually testified against her mother, getting her put away for aggravated child abuse.

In present day, Rose Gold has purchased the very home she suffered abuse from at the hands of her mother, working to update it as the home shell raise her own infant son Adam in. The book begins as Patty is getting out of prison and Rose Gold invites Patty to live with her in their old home. When I tell you how messed up this scenario is, I felt that Wrobel really delved into the long-term implications of this sort of abuse on the child. Does Rose Gold still need her mother around, or is she planning some form of revenge? And is it possible that she could suffer from the very same mental illness as her mother?

Weaving between past and present and alternating narrators from Rose Gold to Patty, Darling Rose Gold takes a different spin from other books because it picks up several years after when most books would end. It would be easy to see this as an epilogue to a book about Munchausen by proxy, where the formerly abused child now is a mother herself and is building a life away from her abuser. But Wrobel has done the opposite here, starting the book where we should be seeing the positive ending and exploring what happens to someone after this sort of abuse occurs.

But who is getting revenge on whom? Is Patty seeking revenge on the daughter who she thinks turned on her? Is Rose Gold seeking revenge on the woman who ruined her childhood? Or maybe neither of these are true—maybe this is a story of moving on and rebuilding a relationship? You’ll have to read to find out!

Thank you to Berkley for my copy. Opinions are my own.