Breakaway Books

Authored by Donna Freitas; Published November 2025; Thriller

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Her One Regret is not a book to read on maternity leave. It is all about motherhood, regret, and the way that society condemns women who do not fit the mold.

In Her One Regret, the nine-month-old baby of Lucy Mendoza is discovered in a parking lot, alone and sobbing in a shopping cart, and the search for Lucy immediately begins. However, when it comes out that Lucy had previously admitted she regretted becoming a mother and had fantasized about planning her own kidnapping to escape, a passionate public dialogue is sparked. Are mothers allowed to regret? As the debate rages, Lucy’s best friend Michelle desperately attempts to convince the police, the public, and anyone who will listen that Lucy did not run away, but instead, something horrible has happened to her.

I truly believe that novels are one of the best ways to get people to think deeply about controversial topics, and that is most certainly the case with this novel. However, I wish that the author had gone about it in a slightly more balanced way. It feels like the novel is about 30% plot and 70% debate about motherhood and regret. I find the debate interesting, certainly, but I also think the plot has a lot of untapped potential. Three women go missing in cases spanning several decades: Are they connected? How? If Lucy Mendoza planned her own kidnapping, did they all? The thriller itself gets short shrift, displaced in favor of repeated conflicts between Michelle and her spouse and onlooker Julia and her husband. These conflicts clearly demonstrate the mismatched mental loads that mothers and fathers carry, but they are not contributing to the plot.

But, wow, the men in this book demonstrate an egregious version of sexism and neglectful fatherhood. I found myself questioning, over and over, if men really expect to do as little as Michelle’s and Julia’s husbands do to parent their children. Their expectations certainly don’t seem to line up with those of the millennial fathers whom I know, although if you compare them with the men described on parenting subreddits, you may find a remarkable resemblance. The single behavior that enraged me the most in this book, though, is how many people see fit to tell women that they couldn’t possibly feel regret, that they couldn’t possibly understand their own feelings. The presumption shocked me.

Unless you are really looking to dive into the inequalities of parenthood and the extraordinarily heavy burdens placed upon mothers, Her One Regret probably isn’t the thriller I would choose.