Darling Rose Gold, by Stephanie Wrobel, is a twisted story of manipulation, with two unreliable narrators. As a child, Rose Gold grew up believing that she was very ill from a chromosomal disorder. She spent most of her childhood with her mother, being homeschooled and taken to endless doctors to treat her constant health troubles, eventually in a wheelchair with a feeding tube before discovering her mother, Patty, was behind it all. It’s so much like the Gypsy Rose Blanchard story that it made me kind of uncomfortable to read a twisted suspense novel that was so clearly about real people.
The whole idea of Munchausen syndrome (or Munchausen by proxy here) is kind of fascinating because I don’t like hospitals or going to the doctor at all, so the whole idea of faking sick for medical attention is very strange to me. But it’s compelling, there’s a real sense of desperation in this story.
In Darling Rose Gold, Patty is caught faking her daughter’s symptoms goes to prison for child abuse, where she continues to hone her manipulation skills. Rose Gold tries out being an adult alone, after a frighteningly sheltered childhood. You feel sorry for her, but she’s also completely disconnected from social skills after being so isolated, so it’s hard to connect with this character at all. Instead of regular social interactions or new friendships, she learned to lie and sneak from her mother.
After her release from prison, Patty plans to bring Rose Gold back into her protection and control, and she has no boundaries between the two. But Rose Gold has grown up, too, and she has her own, creepy agenda now.
There’s a real question of who to trust while these two pretend to get along, and there are so many twists. But overall, it wasn’t a five-star domestic suspense because I found everyone unlikeable and wasn’t as invested as I should have been. Everyone was awful, so I didn’t have anyone to root for or care for. Even the minor characters are awful. (Except for Rose Gold’s cute little baby!) The dark plot, with two manipulators who are both slightly disconnected from reality, is a real twisted pageturner, but it would have been more suspenseful with a character to care about.
