BookBrowse Reviews Mothers and Other Strangers by Corey Ann Haydu

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A pair of estranged childhood best friends reconnects in their thirties as each prepares to welcome her first child.

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Preschoolers Mae and Sydney become fast friends on the playground, and soon Mae's mom, Joni, and Sydney's mom, Beth Ann, are BFFs as well. The two families vacation together every year, and the girls, both only children, are as close as sisters for their entire childhoods. But a secret act of betrayal fractures the friendship between the two moms, and later, their daughters.

A decade after they parted ways, Sydney, now an expectant mom in her thirties, reaches out to Mae. Part of her longs to reconnect with her old friend as she enters this new phase of life, and part of her is just desperate for someone new to recruit to her multi-level marketing downline (see the Beyond the Book article for more on how this kind of recruitment process works). To her surprise, Mae is happy to meet up with her—and it turns out she's pregnant, too. But as the women rebuild their friendship, old wounds reopen and long-buried secrets are revealed.

A major theme of Haydu's novel is what gets passed on between mothers and daughters. Sydney is in many ways similar to Beth Ann, the kind of person who agonizes over the right curtains for her home and makes sure her hair and makeup are perfect before leaving the house. The two play an unspoken game of competing to see who can eat the healthiest, tiniest portions at lunch. Despite their similarities, Beth Ann is determined that Sydney's life path will be different than her own. A housewife her entire adult life, Beth Ann urges Sydney to have her own career…by joining her own MLM downline. She is overbearing in a way that irritates Sydney, and yet Sydney can't stop seeking her mom's approval.

Like Beth Ann, Sydney is at times a passive people pleaser, hesitant to step outside the path that's been laid for her. But she can also be uptight and rigid to the point that tensions boil over, leading her to snap at her husband and friends. Patterns in her own relationship suggest that she might be doomed to echo her parents' troubled marriage.

Mae also longs to impress her mother—but by the time she reaches adulthood, her mom is dead. Joni was a frustrated stay-at-home mom who longed to make a career of art and urged Mae, also an artist, to build a life in New York City. Mae briefly stunned the art world with a single painting that garnered major headlines after an expensive sale, but she has felt creatively stunted ever since. Her idolization of her mother sparked a creative career, but it ultimately proved to be too much pressure.

Both Sydney and Mae think fondly of the "dollhouse mom," a toy they played with as children. With a beautiful home, idyllic family, and hair that was never out of place, this doll was the mother both women now aspire to be. In their imaginations, she had the best traits of both their mothers—Joni's flair for the creative and Beth Anne's knack for homemaking. She was perfectly carefree but not careless. Mae and Sydney's desire to fit this impossible mold will no doubt feel familiar to moms reading this book.

Mothers and Other Strangers depicts fractured but realistic relationships, where an abiding love underpins frustrations and hurt feelings. But it's not a neat, tidy story of familial love overcoming all. There are real wounds in each of the relationships—between mothers and daughters, spouses, and friends. The characters often make big mistakes and hurt one another, but each is likeable in their own way. Though this isn't a short book, it's so immensely readable and compelling that readers might find themselves devouring it in a few sittings. It's a complex, captivating story about the ways people are shaped, for better or worse, by those they love.

This review first ran in the May 6, 2026 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.