Stephanie Wrobel's twisted Darling Rose Gold begins with the titular character picking up her mother, Patty, from prison. Patty has completed her five-year sentence for aggravated child abuse--making her daughter and everyone else believe Rose Gold was chronically ill when nothing was wrong with her.
Until Patty finds a job and place of her own, she asks to stay with Rose Gold, who consents under the condition the situation is temporary. Patty secretly vows, however, to reinstate her control over Rose Gold and never be separated from her precious daughter again. But Rose Gold isn't the easily manipulated girl she used to be. She's a young woman now caring for her own baby, Adam.
Patty also discovers the entire town has turned against her; she's excoriated everywhere she goes. Which makes her wonder: Will her former friends and neighbors sympathize with her again if her grandson suddenly gets sick?
Wrobel employs dual points of view to crack open Rose Gold's and Patty's essences. Both are scheming and often unpleasant, but Wrobel delves deeply into their psyches to illuminate the pain and past damage that motivate the women to commit disturbing actions. Rose Gold is done with being victimized, and simply wants everyone who's hurt her to get a taste of their own medicine. Patty refuses to admit she ever did anything wrong with Rose Gold, and Wrobel makes this understandable--sometimes one must deny reality in order to survive. The women's lonely, desperate inner lives elicit both empathy and alarm, and readers' loyalties will flip-flop from chapter to chapter in this unsettling yet engrossing debut. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd