BOOK REVIEW: Saving Meghan by D. J. Palmer @djpalmerauthor @stmartinspress #savingmeghan #protectmeghan #believebecky

Can you love someone to death?

In a stunning novel that is part medical thriller, part domestic suspense, D. J. Palmer brings us the shocking and unputdownable story of a sick girl with parents who will stop at nothing to save her. Or is it possible one of them are to blame? This book had me changing my mind so often, I was getting whiplash. A truly dazzling and intellectually mind-blowing thriller!

About the Book

Some would say Becky Gerard is a devoted mother and would do anything for her only child. Others, including her husband Carl, claim she’s obsessed and can’t stop the vicious circle of finding a cure at her daughter’s expense.

Fifteen-year-old Meghan has been in and out of hospitals with a plague of unexplained illnesses. But when the ailments take a sharp turn, clashing medical opinions begin to raise questions about the puzzling nature of Meghan’s illness. Doctors suspect Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a rare behavioral disorder where the primary caretaker seeks medical help for made-up symptoms of a child. Is this what’s going on? Or is there something even more sinister at hand?

As the Gerards grow more and more suspicious of each other and their medical team, Becky must race against time to prove her daughter has a deadly disease. But first, she must confront her darkest fears and family secrets that threaten to not only upend her once-ordered life…but to destroy it.

Reflection

The book opens with a riveting scene where Becky is boarded a cross-country flight, and awaiting a text from her husband about a health scare her daughter has. I am not a parent, but the way Palmer wrote that scene was truly heart-pounding. We all know that feeling when we are asked to turn off our phones and we are waiting for a communication. Once we depart, there’s no way for us to check in. It is scary! I could feel Becky’s panic!

Meghan’s mysterious-yet-vague symptoms are at the center of this story. She’s clearly experiencing pain, but because the symptoms are ambiguous (stomach pain, blurred vision, exhaustion), it’s very unclear whether they are related to a central cause, or perhaps symptoms of a psychological issue either internal to Meghan or sparked by someone else. If I’m honest, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Meghan’s symptoms.

To me the central theme of this book was how the same exact events can be interpreted so many different ways. For instance, a mother doesn’t show the expected reaction to a hypothesis from a doctor about her daughter’s illness. Is this because she doesn’t care? She doesn’t want that to be the case? She doesn’t feel heard? She is worried? She is relieved? We all think we are experts at reading behavior in others, but the fact remains that we don’t know exactly what a certain reaction means. We don’t know how we would respond.

And this also circles back to hidden illnesses—those that are visible but are very real to the person experiencing them. I often doubted Meghan’s pain, but then I felt guilty for doubting it because I don’t really know what she is experiencing. I’m not Meghan!

Munchhausen’s syndrome and Munchhausen by proxy are both conditions I learned about early in my psychology studies. But these two illnesses have received broad recognition in the wake of a popular novel and television series (no spoilers so I won’t name it), and in the wake of the documentary highlighting the famous case of a girl complicit in the murder of her mother, who had been forcing her daughter to fake an illness her entire life.

They are absolutely fascinating and heartbreaking mental illnesses, and they are also particularly difficult to diagnose. No one wants to be the doctor who disregards real illness because they suspect it is being faked. On the reverse and as we see in this book, once the accusation is put out there, it is extremely hard for parents and the patient to overcome them. Every new event is scrutinized, assumed to be fake.

After that long and rambling review, I want to circle back to the book and say—read this! I honestly couldn’t put it down. Palmer had me questioning everything through the entire book. A fascinating story with dynamic writing—this is sure to be a best seller!

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for my copy. Opinions are my own.