Save Me

LISA SCOTTOLINE

Synopsis from Goodreads: Save Me will have readers wondering just how far they would go to save the ones they love. Lisa Scottoline is writing about real issues that resonate with real women, and the results are emotional, heartbreaking and honest.

Rose McKenna volunteers as a lunch mom in her daughter Melly's school in order to keep an eye on Amanda, a mean girl who's been bullying her daughter. Her fears come true when the bullying begins, sending Melly to the bathroom in tears. Just as Rose is about to follow after her daughter, a massive explosion goes off in the kitchen, sending the room into chaos.

Rose finds herself faced with the horrifying decision of whether or not to run to the bathroom to rescue her daughter or usher Amanda to safety. She believes she has accomplished both, only to discover that Amanda, for an unknown reason, ran back into the school once out of Rose's sight. In an instance, Rose goes from hero to villain as the small community blames Amanda's injuries on her. In the days that follow, Rose's life starts to fall to pieces, Amanda's mother decides to sue, her marriage is put to the test, and worse, when her daughter returns to school, the bullying only intensifies. Rose must take matters into her own hands and get down to the truth of what really happened that fateful day in order to save herself, her marriage and her family.

In the way that Look Again had readers questioning everything they thought they knew about family, Save Me will have readers wondering just how far they would go to save the ones they love. Lisa Scottoline is writing about real issues that resonate with real women, and the results are emotional, heartbreaking and honest.

Stats for my copy: Hardback, St. Martin's Press, 2011.

How acquired: Bought.

First line: Rose McKenna stood against the wall in the noisy cafeteria, having volunteered as lunch mom, which is like a security guard with eyeliner.

My thoughts: This author is one who I see a lot of but had never read until now. She seems to be popular, and it's definitely an easy read, requiring no thought or concentration. But it wasn't a particularly compelling read.

Rose's dilemma was an interesting one. When there's an explosion in the kitchen and a fire breaks out while she is volunteering for lunch duty at her daughter's school, she has to quickly decide whether to save the three girls in the cafeteria, or rush closer to the fire where her daughter had retreated to a handicapped bathroom. Torn, she takes the other three girls to a doorway leading into a hall, where a teacher is ushering kids out, and tells them to run outside. Then she goes back to save her daughter, and she literally does save her daughter's life.

I did not connect with Rose at all. Her daughter has a birth mark on her face, and is constantly teased and bullied, and apparently the only reason Rose volunteered for lunch room duty was so she could spy on her daughter and her daughter's bullies – the three girls mentioned above, with Amanda being their ringleader. After watching Amanda tease Melly, and the other two girls laughing, Rose confronts them as the lunch period ends and the rest of the kids head out to recess, which is why she and the girls are in the cafeteria when the fire starts. Rose is hailed as “Hero Mom” by the press, until it comes out that Amanda, despite Rose taking her to the doorway, was seriously injured, and for most of the book it's not known whether she will live or die.

I was interested to see how the bullying would play out, but after the fire not much happened with that. I don't have much personal experience with bullying, so I can't say for sure how I would react if I were Rose and Melly were my daughter. I don't think I would react the way Rose did. I don't think I would volunteer at my daughter's school just so I could look out for her. Melly is obsessed with Harry Potter, often reciting different incantations from the books, and Rose hates that. She thinks that Melly's love of all things Potter makes her different from the other kids, and brands her as being weird, contributing to why she is being bullied. I found that incredibly frustrating. At one point she tries to force Melly to read an American Girl book, because the other girls, Amanda included, are crazy about them. Honestly, I felt like Rose was a whiner who felt as sorry for herself as she did for her daughter.

Then the story turned a corner and became more about Rose investigating the cause of the fire. It's ruled accidental, but she is convinced otherwise. And then an incident from her past becomes public knowledge, an incident that she never confided to anyone, including her husband and her best friend. And then other people die, and she begins snooping around like an investigative reporter, even going undercover, trying to connect everything.

The best part of the book was Rose's husband, Leo. He's not Melly's biological father, but he adores her and she adores him, and his conversations and interactions with Melly were fantastic and charming.

One other minor irritation that started to get to me – when Rose was in her car driving and accelerated, which she did a lot, she was constantly described as feeding the car gas. The phrase “fed the car gas” was used so much that at one point I stopped reading to take a picture of the page and post on Instagram and Litsy that if I read those words one more time I might scream. Coincidentally, the phrase did not show up again in the following pages. Instead, Rose began constantly hitting the gas. In fact, she hit the gas twice on one page, making me think that after the second time she must be going around 120 mph.

The resolution was nice. The book was ok. Didn't love it, didn't hate it.