Book Review: Prom Mom | Laura Lippman

Laura Lippman is always a go-to author for me and truly one of the best crime fiction authors (in my opinion) currently writing. I read an interview with Lippman where she describes that she knows some readers only want likable characters, but writing a character to be likable isn’t really something she thinks about while writing. I personally love a flawed character because they feel more authentic.

Prom Mom is a daring novel, centering on a teen with an unwanted pregnancy and the fallout many years later. Lippman doesn’t shy away from getting a bit political in this one, and it works to add the feeling that these are the stories of real people.

About the Book | Prom Mom

Characters

Amber Glass is the titular prom mom, and a central character. Amber had a baby on prom night who died and she was accused of murder and served time. In present day she owns an art gallery.

Joe Simpson was Amber’s prom date and alleged father of the baby. He has gone on to have a successful real estate job and marry his college sweetheart, Meredith, who is now a successful plastic surgeon. Jordan Altman works at Joe’s firm and he is having an affair with her.

Plot

Amber Glass has tried to leave her past in Baltimore behind. In high school, Amber was tutoring Joe Simpson and occasionally sleeping with him. But Joe never considered Amber his girlfriend, he still was held up on his ex who dumped him. When Joe takes Amber to prom to spite his ex, the night takes a bad turn and Amber goes back to their hotel room. There, she delivers a baby that neither acknowledged (or maybe even knew) she was pregnant with.

When she awoke, the baby was dead and Amber was forever labeled “Prom Mom”—the woman who allegedly murdered her baby on prom night. After serving time in juvenile detention, Amber has started a new life in New Orleans. But after a few decades she returns to Baltimore to open a gallery. As long as she stays away from Joe Simpson, things should be good.

But Amber doesn’t stay away from Joe Simpson. Joe is married to his beautiful, successful wife Meredith and having an affair with a woman from work, but he can’t help stopping by Amber’s gallery. Joe is still as drawn to Amber as he was in high school, but he doesn’t necessarily want to have a relationship with her.

As Joe and Amber dance towards a line that can’t be uncrossed, things become more tangled. And then Joe asks Amber for a favor…

Review | Prom Mom

True to her word, the three central characters (Amber, Joe, and Meredith) seem to be in a three-way tie for not being entirely likable. It must be intentional that for most of the book, we aren’t given a character to root for. Arguably you could say this for the whole book, though towards the end one pulled ahead for me.

Each of them have a different role to play. Joe is absolutely the most despicable in the things he has done to the women in his life, but he also seems to care the most about the others. Meredith seemingly has done nothing wrong, but there is something about her that rubs the reader the wrong way—a sense of entitlement, perhaps. A superiority. A little bit of manipulation. And then Amber should be the most sympathetic, but she’s cold and there’s always a sense she’s not really telling the reader everything.

I’ve mentioned in other posts that I don’t like books set during the pandemic and this one is during the present timeline. That said, it isn’t a main feature, it’s used to develop the characters and their situations. I didn’t love having the pandemic featured but it didn’t bother me as much as other books.

A lot of the story covers what happened leading up to prom night as well as flashing back to the years in between. Joe took a gap year and worked for his uncle, which led him on his path to commercial real estate. Meanwhile Amber came out of prison and moved to New Orleans. The 2016 election features prominently, as does Meredith’s career in medicine and her marriage to Joe.

I went into this expecting the book to focus heavily on Amber, the baby, and what really happened on prom night. It doesn’t. Amber actually takes a backseat in a sense during much of the middle of the book. The story is a slow build, piecing small moments together across time until the full picture comes into play.

After a relatively slow, character-driven plot, the ending was a complete jaw-dropper. I actually had to go back and read it three times to make sure I grasped everything.

As usual with Lippman, this is the sort of book that you think about long after finishing. It is subtle but impactful.

About the Author | Laura Lippman

Laura Lippman was a reporter for twenty years, including twelve years at The (Baltimore) Sun. She began writing novels while working fulltime and published seven books about “accidental PI” Tess Monaghan before leaving daily journalism in 2001. Her work has been awarded the Edgar ®, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards. She also has been nominated for other prizes in the crime fiction field, including the Hammett and the Macavity. She was the first-ever recipient of the Mayor’s Prize for Literary Excellence and the first genre writer recognized as Author of the Year by the Maryland Library Association.

Ms. Lippman grew up in Baltimore and attended city schools through ninth grade. After graduating from Wilde Lake High School in Columbia, Md., Ms. Lippman attended Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Her other newspaper jobs included the Waco Tribune-Herald and the San Antonio Light.

Ms. Lippman returned to Baltimore in 1989 and has lived there since. She is the daughter of Theo Lippman Jr., a Sun editorial writer who retired in 1995 but continues to freelance for several newspapers, and Madeline Mabry Lippman, a former Baltimore City school librarian. Her sister, Susan, is a local bookseller.

I recommend reading this interview about what inspired Prom Mom and check out her other books on her author’s page.