Mini Review & Author Interview:
DARLING ROSE GOLD by Stephanie Wrobel
I had the pleasure of reading Stephanie Wrobel’s stunning debut novel DARLING ROSE GOLD this past fall, and boy oh boy did I love it. Today marks the US publication day for this exceptional new suspense read, and to celebrate, I’m so excited to give CBTB readers a two-for-one feature on what is sure to be one of my favorite books of 2020. In this blog post, you’ll find a mini review of DARLING ROSE GOLD, plus an interview with author Stephanie Wrobel herself! I had the pleasure of sitting down with Stephanie to talk all things DARLING ROSE GOLD when she was in New York in advance of her book’s publication, and I absolutely loved our conversation. We talked true crime, mental health, getting into the heads of your characters, and a whole lot more. For any reader looking for a deliciously dark suspense novel to dig into this spring, consider DARLING ROSE GOLD a must-read.
Read on for details on DARLING ROSE GOLD, my mini review, and an interview with the author!
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About Darling Rose Gold:
Mothers never forget. Daughters never forgive.
For the first eighteen years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair and practically lived at the hospital. Neighbors did all they could, holding fundraisers and offering shoulders to cry on, but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with Rose Gold.
Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar.
After serving five years in prison, Patty gets out with nowhere to go and begs her daughter to take her in. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes.
Patty insists all she wants is to reconcile their differences. She says she's forgiven Rose Gold for turning her in and testifying against her. But Rose Gold knows her mother. Patty Watts always settles a score.
Unfortunately for Patty, Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling... And she's waited such a long time for her mother to come home.
“Dazzling, dark and utterly delicious”—J. P. Delaney, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Before
“One of the most captivating and disturbing thrillers I've read this year. An astonishing debut”—Samantha Downing, USA Today bestselling author of My Lovely Wife
“Sensationally good—two complex characters power the story like a nuclear reaction, and won’t let you forget them. Wrobel is one to watch.”—Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Darling Rose Gold is an absolutely brilliant book; funny, dark, authentic and a total page turner. I loved it.”—Lisa Jewell, New York Times bestselling author of The Family Upstairs
CBTB Mini Review: DARLING ROSE GOLD
Some books just scream “read me now,” and if that doesn’t describe Stephanie Wrobel’s buzzy debut suspense novel DARLING ROSE GOLD, I don’t know what does. From its Instagram-worthy cover to its ripped-from-the-headlines plot, DARLING ROSE GOLD is tailor-made for millennial suspense readers, and I mean that in the best possible way. When I read DARLING ROSE GOLD, it had been ages since I read a book that I genuinely didn’t want to put down even for a second. Luckily for me, Stephanie Wrobel and her deliciously dark debut were there to save the day. I devoured DARLING ROSE GOLD in what felt like mere moments, savoring every breathless page of this original, sometimes funny, sometimes straight-up crazy debut suspense read. In short: this one belongs on your spring TBR list.
This sharp, sinister suspense novel explores mother-daughter relationships gone very wrong. Central to DARLING ROSE GOLD is the fascinating (and disturbing) syndrome of Munchausen by proxy. Munchausen syndrome by proxy is a mental illness in which a caretaker - most often a mother - fakes or induces health problems in the person under their care. For the true crime addicts among us, Munchausen syndrome by proxy became infamous in true crime pop culture through the case of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, and the subsequent Hulu dramatization of her story, The Act. In DARLING ROSE GOLD, Stephanie Wrobel probes the dark corners of the mother-daughter bond through the lens of this disturbing disorder. Sharp and sinister, addictive and entertaining, DARLING ROSE GOLD is the perfect mashup of psychological suspense and ripped-from-the-headlines, real-world inspiration.
DARLING ROSE GOLD follows two key characters: Patty Watts and her daughter, Rose Gold Watts. Growing up, Rose Gold believed she was dangerously ill. Her mother, Patty, seemed to the outside world to be a saint: a woman willing to sacrifice anything in the name of caring for her young daughter. But nothing here is quite as it seems. As she grew up, Rose Gold discovered a shocking truth: her mother, the person she was supposed to be able to trust, was making her sick. Fast forward years, and Patty has finished serving a jail sentence for abusing her daughter. Rose Gold is now a mother herself, and she is about to reunite with the woman who harmed her so badly. What could possibly go wrong? From the outset, DARLING ROSE GOLD differentiates itself from its peers. This story begins where most others end: after Rose Gold discovers that what she thought she knew about her childhood was a lie, and even after her mother serves time in jail for abusing her daughter. This story unfolds as Rose Gold and Patty attempt to mend their (very twisted) relationship; the heart of the action here isn’t what Patty did to Rose Gold, but what fallout these past crimes will have in the present day. Wrobel cleverly establishes the facts of the case from the outset, leaving the reader to wonder what could happen next as mother and daughter reunite… and what does happen will entertain and surprise in equal measure. DARLING ROSE GOLD is a story about the unbreakable bond between mother and daughter—and what happens when that bond is as dysfunctional as it is strong. This is a must-read for fans of sinister and binge-worthy psychological suspense, and it’s bound to be one of my favorite books of the year.
Author Interview: Stephanie Wrobel
DARLING ROSE GOLD
Crime by the Book: Let’s start at the beginning - with inspiration. Was there a particular moment or conversation that sparked the idea for DARLING ROSE GOLD?
Stephanie Wrobel: My best friend is an elementary school psychologist in Colorado, and she was the one who introduced me to the concept of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. She has had a few students where she suspected that their mothers have it. So she told me about it, and I was immediately fascinated. I went down this rabbit hole of research, and I was shocked to find out that the perpetrators are usually women - and mothers in particular. The mother-child bond is supposed to be sacred, but it’s not in this case, and I wanted to explore why.
So I started reading these firsthand accounts, and one in particular stuck out, which was a memoir called Sickened by Julie Gregory. Julie’s mom had Munchausen by proxy, and Julie was a victim of her abuse. And there’s one story she tells, where she and her mom were coming back from the doctor’s office, they’re in the car, and Julie’s mom said, “you were such a good girl today, you deserve a treat. Here, have a sucker.” And she takes out a box of matches, and hands Julie one. And Julie, of course, doesn’t know any better, she’s a little girl, so she starts eating it. It’s one of the many things making her sick. That image has haunted me for well over two years. I just wondered, what is going through the mind of someone who can rationalize feeding their child a match? That was the impetus for the book. I wanted to get inside Patty’s head, I wanted to explore whether she knows she’s lying or if she truly thinks she’s doing what’s best for her daughter.
“The mother-child bond is supposed to be sacred, but it’s not in this case, and I wanted to explore why.”
CBTB: Speaking of getting inside Patty’s head, I loved the way you get inside the heads of both your protagonists in DARLING ROSE GOLD. Can you quickly introduce us to the women central to this story?
SW: Patty Watts is a mother from a small town in Illinois. She has always lived in that town. She doesn’t come from a super supportive family. When we meet her, she is just getting out of prison for child abuse, a crime of which she claims she is completely innocent. She has a chip on her shoulder, not only because of what she perceives as her daughter’s betrayal, but also because of what she perceives as the entire town’s betrayal, turning against her.
Her daughter, Rose Gold, lived her entire life very sheltered and socially isolated. She believed that she was very sick—she had a feeding tube, she had to undergo all these surgeries… but then as a teenager, almost 18 years old, she found out that in fact she wasn’t sick - it was her mother who was faking the illness. Her world view is completely warped. She doesn’t know the same pop culture references or colloquialisms that everyone else does. She relates to the world very differently, and she also has a chip on her shoulder, because she’s been horribly mistreated by her mom all these years.
CBTB: For those reading this interview (and your book!) who might now know what it is, explain to us Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
SW: Munchausen by proxy is a mental illness where the caregiver fakes or induces health problems in the person they’re caring for, which is usually a child but can also be an elderly person or someone with other health challenges. What differentiates Munchausen by proxy from something like malingering is the motivation. The motivation for Munchausen by proxy is the need for attention or love from a doctor or other authority figure within the medical community, whereas in something like malingering, the motivation might be to commit fraud or to get out of a court appearance, something like that. That to me is the most interesting thing: what motivates people with this illness.
CBTB: It seems like Munchausen by proxy has been in the zeitgeist a lot recently, with Hulu’s The Act and all the true crime podcasts surrounding the Gypsy Rose Blanchard case. If you had to hypothesize, what do you think makes Munchausen by proxy so fascinating to us? Why the collective fascination with these stories?
SW: I think it goes back to this idea of the mother-child bond. The one person you’re supposed to be able to depend on in your life is your mother, and for that betrayal to be so complete, not only to have her turn her back but also to be actively hurting you, is something that is impossible for a lot of people to understand or imagine.
CBTB: As I was reading DARLING ROSE GOLD, I just kept thinking “I need to meet this author and ask her what kind of research went into this book!” So now’s my chance. What did your research for this book look like? What did you learn through your research that was particularly surprising?
SW: My research was both online and through texts. I didn’t conduct any first-person interviews, because I felt like there was enough there in the texts I read. The most helpful books for me personally were Julie Gregory’s Sickened, to get the victim’s perspective, and a textbook called Playing Sick? by Mark Feldman that helped me with the scientific side of it. And then of course reading online more recent cases, like the case of the Blanchards, and a more recent case of a Colorado woman whose daughter died about a year ago, and it turns out it was all the mom’s doing.
The things I found the most shocking were that women are most often the perpetrators, and the motivation of course, but also the fact that Munchausen by proxy is thought to be incurable, because people very rarely admit to having it. The Colorado case is the perfect example, because they actually confronted the woman about it, but she denied having it. What I find the most fascinating about it is that it’s very hard to square: when you’re feeding your child a match, how can you not know that you’re making your child sick? That grey area between lying and truly believing what you’re saying is what fascinates me the most.
“That grey area between lying and truly believing what you’re saying is what fascinates me the most.”
CBTB: You did such a good job portraying that grey area through Patty’s character. I won’t say too much but I truly went back and forth on my views about Patty because I was buying into her story about herself so much.
Do you have any sense for how people most typically get caught for this?
SW: I think it is quite rare for it to be caught. This is just anecdotal, but I don’t think there are actually a lot of statistics available for how prevalent this illness is, and how often it’s caught, because I think it goes under the radar a lot. I think it’s probably most often that a doctor catches on, but one thing that’s pretty common with Munchausen by proxy is that once a doctor or nurse gets suspicious, the perpetrator will take the child to a new doctor. And a lot of times these doctors aren’t talking to each other. Even with this Colorado case, there were doctors who had suspicions, but nobody relayed the information. It seems obvious in retrospect, but it’s not so clear cut when it’s happening.
CBTB: The mother-daughter relationship in DARLING ROSE GOLD is one of my favorite elements of this story. This is a seriously twisted relationship! Could you tell us a little bit about how it felt to write this relationship and inhabit that space?
SW: Thankfully I have no real-life experience with this! I always feel the need to tell everyone that my mother is wonderful. But I tried to start from a place of some relatability. Although their relationship is very twisted, they both want universal things from each other. Patty wants to be needed and loved, and I think that a lot of parents can relate to that. And Rose Gold wants independence, but also her mother’s approval, and I think a lot of children can relate to that. I don’t think it needed to be some kind of freak show relationship that has nothing relatable about it. But, that said, their relationship is extremely dysfunctional.
When it comes to getting in their mindsets, I started with Patty, and I don’t know what it says about me that I found Patty much easier to write… but her voice came to me pretty quickly. I think the fact that she is sarcastic, and tries to use humor to deflect, makes her seem like less of a monster than she is. Rose Gold was much more challenging. In the first draft, she was too flippant, in the second draft, she was too much of a pushover - there is that struggle of trying to get what her actual reaction would be right. And it’s not my reaction - it has to be her reaction. At the end of the day, when you’re writing characters, it’s your imagination you’re relying on, so you have to try to think honestly about what their true reaction would be.
CBTB: Rose Gold had to be especially tough, because she absolutely is a victim of these horrible abuses, but she also does some not so great stuff herself. It’s a really interesting character to read because she has so many facets. She’s not just a completely innocent person without any responsibility - she has agency, and she does things wrong, too. I liked that balance of the sides of her personality.
DARLING ROSE GOLD is your debut novel - congratulations! I’d love if you could tell us a little bit about how this novel came to be. Was becoming a published author a goal for you for a long time?
SW: Yes! I have always wanted to write novels, but I didn’t really take it seriously until I went to grad school because I thought that nobody supports themselves as an author. I worked in advertising for six or seven years as a copywriter, which was great training for this, because when you’re trying to write a six-word billboard you really have to cut out everything that’s extraneous! When my husband and I moved to London, I was between jobs for a while, and I thought well, I’m not getting any younger, and if there was one regret I might have it would be not trying this for real. So I applied to a bunch of graduate schools and thought I would put two years into this and see where I get. When I went into grad school I went in with the goal of coming out with a finished novel, if humanly possible. So DARLING ROSE GOLD was my thesis for my MFA. And then things went very smoothly, luckily!
CBTB: What are you most excited about, now that your debut novel is out in the world?
SW: I find every new step so exciting, to be honest! But I think the coolest part is listening to other people talk about the characters like they are real people. That feels really cool! And honestly I’m most excited that I get to keep writing. I just love the day to day of it. My goal is to have this do well enough that I can continue to write.
CBTB: What are you working on next?
SW: I’ve written the first draft of my second novel, and I’m revising now. I’ve been describing this book as a wellness center with cult-like tendencies! It’s written from three points of view: the leader, a member, and a concerned relative.
CBTB: Okay, I cannot wait to read it! Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions about DARLING ROSE GOLD, and a huge congratulations!
Many thanks to Stephanie Wrobel for taking the time to answer my questions about her debut novel, DARLING ROSE GOLD! DARLING ROSE GOLD is available now at your favorite bookseller.
Book Details:
Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Berkley (March 17, 2020)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0593100069
ISBN-13: 978-0593100066
Crime by the Book is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. This in no way affects my opinion of the book(s) included in this post.
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