Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth Review: A Heartbreaking Literary Mystery That Will Stay With You

Read time: 4 minutes

🎧 Listened in audio | ⏱ Duration: 9 hours
📢 Narrated by Hannah Fredericksen and Jenny Seedsman
🏷️ Publisher: St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Audio
📅 Published: October 1, 2025

Book Blurb:

Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick is eighty-one, sharp-tongued, and has lived on Kenny Lane longer than anyone else. But beneath her nosy, curmudgeonly exterior lies a past she’s carefully buried—one tied to a disturbing pattern of deaths. When a curious young girl moves in and forms an unlikely bond with Elsie, long-hidden secrets begin to surface. Told across timelines—from Elsie’s childhood to her present—the story unravels the mystery of “Mad Mabel,” exploring justice, memory, and the unsettling truth about who society chooses to suspect… and who it doesn’t.

Let’s talk about the book:

Here’s the thing about Mad Mabel: it sneaks up on you like a cat you didn’t know you were allergic to. I almost DNF’d this one early on. Old lady with a killer past felt like well-trodden territory, and I wasn’t sure I was in the mood. But those Goodreads reviews (4.39 stars, people) whispered in my ear, and I’m so glad I listened. Because what starts as a quiet mystery about secrets and suburban suspicion becomes something so much bigger. A gut-wrenching meditation on empathy, bias, and the stories we tell ourselves about who deserves compassion.

Sally Hepworth builds Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick like a master architect, showing us the eight-year-old and the eighty-one-year-old side by side, letting the past and present bleed into each other until you’re holding your breath between chapters. When one natural death (because really, what’s suspicious about a ninety-year-old passing?) threatens to unravel Elsie’s carefully buried history, the entire neighborhood mobilizes. And that’s when the book stopped being a cozy mystery and became something rawer. The dual timeline isn’t just a gimmick; it’s the engine of the entire emotional punch. You see where Elsie’s story started, and you see where it’s landed, and the space between those two truths will wreck you in the best way.

I wasn’t prepared for how deeply this one would dig. Hepworth doesn’t flinch from the uncomfortable questions: Who gets our empathy? Whose stories do we believe? When is justice convenient, and when is it inconvenient? The narrators, Hannah Fredericksen and Jenny Seedsman, brought such tenderness and grit to both timelines that I found myself tearing up in the grocery store parking lot more than once. This isn’t just a thriller. It’s a character study that should be taught in literature classes, a story that expands your capacity to feel. Fair warning: you will weep. But you’ll also come out the other side with a heart three sizes bigger and a new appreciation for how fiction can hold a mirror up to our worst instincts and best possibilities.

Would I recommend it?

If you’re looking for a thriller that’s all twists and no tears, this isn’t it. But if you want a book that will make you feel deeply, uncomfortably, beautifully, then yes, drop everything and pick this up. Mad Mabel is a masterclass in character-driven storytelling, the kind of book that lingers long after the final chapter. Sally Hepworth has written something extraordinary here: a mystery that matters, a thriller with a soul, and a story that will change how you think about justice, mercy, and who we decide is worthy of our compassion. It gutted me. I loved every second of it.

Book Recommendations

• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig – Reflective, introspective, and centered on life choices and perspective shifts.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth – Similar emotional depth with morally complex characters.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman – Character-driven, quietly devastating, and deeply empathetic.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• The Push by Ashley Audrain – Explores motherhood, perception, and unsettling truths.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt – Emotional storytelling with layered characters and heart.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy

Let’s talk about unexpected heartbreaks

Have you ever picked up a book expecting one thing… and ended up emotionally wrecked instead? Did you stick it out or DNF too early? Tell me I need to know I wasn’t alone here.

Book Links

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Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
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Check out more books from St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Audio