Mad Mabel
Sally Hepworth, 2025
Mystery, thriller & crime Contemporary fiction
A voice that would do anything for one friend, a world of bullies and victims, and a kindness that turns out to be the most dangerous thing in it. A warm, fiercely loyal voice moves quickly through social cruelty, with dread tightening under the tenderness.
Feels like tenderness and dread. About friendship, love and society.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy domestic suspense built around friendship and social pressure, especially when the narrator's loyalty feels both touching and unsettling. Be prepared for a narrator whose willingness to go to extremes can make the moral ground shift under you.
Why read it
It gives you a tense, intimate look at what fierce friendship can justify, and asks how far kindness can bend before it becomes something else.
A page from the book
There is a love that outranks romance, and almost nobody admits it.
There will be those who disagree with me, of course. People who say romantic love trumps platonic female friendship. Or parental love. Or love of self. Those people are just giving away the fact that they’ve never experienced true platonic female friendship. The kind of friendship you’d do anything to preserve—fight, steal. Even kill. Here’s a little-spoken fact for you: Friends are like oxygen. If you’ve been blessed enough to have always been surrounded by friends, you might think I’m overplaying this. I don’t blame you. If you’d always been surrounded by air, you wouldn’t think to credit it for your very existence either. But I’ve spent much of my life gasping for breath, so I promise you, it’s true. Friends are like oxygen. And the only reason I’m still alive is Daphne. Sally Hepworth.Hepworth is a Melbourne-based Australian novelist whose domestic suspense titles, including The Good Sister and The Soulmate, have appeared on bestseller lists on both sides of the Pacific.
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Questions readers ask
- Is Mad Mabel for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy domestic suspense built around friendship and social pressure, especially when the narrator's loyalty feels both touching and unsettling. Be prepared for a narrator whose willingness to go to extremes can make the moral ground shift under you.
- What is Mad Mabel like?
- A warm, fiercely loyal voice moves quickly through social cruelty, with dread tightening under the tenderness. Feels like tenderness and dread. About friendship, love and society.
- What should I read after Mad Mabel?
- If you liked Mad Mabel, try Truly Madly Guilty (Liane Moriarty), The Briar Club (Kate Quinn) and Wild Dark Shore (Charlotte McConaghy).
A taste of the feed
What if the worst day begins exactly like any other?
There is no special protection when you cross that invisible line from your ordinary life to that parallel world where tragedies happen. It happens just like this. You don’t become someone else. You’re still exactly the same. Everything around you still smells and looks and feels exactly the same.
Truly Madly Guilty · Liane Moriarty
The phrase adults use to end arguments, taken apart by someone who won't.
Life really hasn’t been very fair to you, Pete. I’m sorry about that.“ ”Mom says life isn’t fair, and that’s all there is to it.“ ”Your mom says that to justify the fact that *she* isn’t being fair to *you*,“ Mrs. Grace said calmly. ”which is mostly what people mean when they say life isn’t fair. It isn’t, which is why people should endeavour to be *more* fair to one another, not less.
The Briar Club · Kate Quinn
The confession a parent makes only inside his own head.
You are not meant to have favorites, but my youngest is that. If only by a hair, and with a gun to my head. If I really, really had to answer. And not because we are most alike: that is my oldest and me. Not because we are least alike: that is my daughter and me. Maybe it is because he is curious and kind and so smart it can make your eyes water. Maybe it’s because he whispers to the wind and hears its voice in return. Most likely I don’t know why. But it may also be because, for one brief moment long ago, I wished him dead.
Wild Dark Shore · Charlotte McConaghy
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