Love, Mom

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, child sexual abuse, and emotional abuse.

Mackenzie is the protagonist and primary narrator of Love, Mom. She is a 21-year-old college student with a goth aesthetic: She has “dark hair with matching black lipstick and heavy eyeliner” (53) and “always wears black” (7). Mackenzie is defined by her complicated relationship with the woman she believes is her mother. At the beginning of the novel, Mackenzie is “very bitter” about the lack of affection she receives from her mother. As a talented writer, Mackenzie resents the fact that “everyone thinks the best part of [her] is inherited from her [mother]” (38). Mackenzie’s relationship with her mother is so strained that when she learns that she has a serious medical condition, she decides not to tell her mother “out of spite, imagining how one day, [she] would just drop dead, and she and Dad would regret that they never paid [her] more attention” (59). The end of the novel demonstrates that Mackenzie’s difficult relationship with “Elizabeth” is because she is not Mackenzie’s true mother but an impostor.

As Mackenzie learns more about the real Elizabeth through her diary pages, she begins to long for a deeper relationship with her mother.