Bernadette was an architect who gained a modest amount of fame early in her career. But when her daughter Bee was born with a life-threatening heart problem, Bernadette centered her life on caring for her gravely ill child.
Fortunately, Bee, after many surgeries, grew up to be an intelligent and enthusiastic student, earning an invitation to attend a exclusive East Coast boarding school in her early teenage years. Unfortunately, at the same time, Bernadette's life was falling apart and her marriage to a successful Microsoft executive was in serious trouble.
After rather sad and ridiculous clashes with a neighbor woman and rather vague threats of suicide, Bernadette's spouse decided she should be committed to a mental care facility. And that is when Bernadette vanished.
Bee refused to believe her beloved mother would just disappear and leave Bee behind. After she went off to her boarding school, she received a packet of letters and other correspondence from her mother and about her mother. After reading everything in the packet, Bee became convinced that Bernadette had taken a trip to Antarctica, a trip the whole family was planning to take as a reward for Bee for her scholastic achievements. But the trip was cancelled due to Bernadette's disappearance.
Bee was so distracted by her search for her missing mother, that the boarding school sent her home to her father. After the father read the packet of information, he was also convinced Bernadette had traveled to Antarctica without them. Further digging revealed that although she did travel to Antarctica, she vanished somewhere off the ship on its return voyage. The cruise line assumed she was swept overboard during the rough crossing. But Bee absolutely refused to believe that was the case. So her father, in order to give her closure, booked them passage on another cruise to Antarctica.
This was a fairly good story. Tad disappointing, though. As per usual, the blurbs gushed about what a funny story it was: "Divinely funny" "Delightful" "Uproarious" "Fresh and funny" "Comic caper". But it wasn't funny. At most it was mildly amusing. I also don't care for stories told in bits and pieces. I skipped a some of the more boring items.
We are told over and over what a genius Bernadette is. But she acts like a total airhead, getting into pointless disagreements with the neighbors and giving her private information to some stranger online. Really, all the characters are pretty annoying, with the exception of Bee, who never loses faith in her mother.
Here is a review by Kirkus.
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