Her One Regret Book Summary: Donna Freitas Thriller
Introduction: The Last Taboo of Motherhood
On a bright September afternoon in Narragansett, Rhode Island, a real estate agent named Lucy Mendoza loads groceries into her car with her nine-month-old daughter nearby.
Minutes later, Lucy is gone, and the baby is found alone in a shopping cart in the middle of the lot.
Donna Freitas builds Her One Regret around that disappearance and the secret that surfaces afterward: months earlier, Lucy told her best friend that becoming a mother was her one regret.
The novel moves through several perspectives—a loyal friend, an exhausted new mother, and a retired detective—as a private confession turns into a public firestorm.
â–¶ Her One Regret Summary & Recap On YouTube
This novel suits readers of domestic suspense and psychological thrillers who prefer character-driven mysteries over action-heavy plots.
The narrative rotates among four perspectives and unfolds over a compressed timeline, so readers who follow multiple viewpoints and shifting investigations will find the structure familiar.
Its subject matter—maternal regret, postpartum depression, identity loss, and media scrutiny—appeals to readers interested in fiction about motherhood and women’s choices.
The book also includes captivity, a serial-crime subplot, and graphic emotional distress, which readers sensitive to those subjects may want to note.
Readers who enjoy coastal New England settings, cold-case threads, and endings that resolve both a mystery and a personal arc are the most direct audience.
The postscript moves five years forward, so those who prefer a settled, forward-looking conclusion will find one here.
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TL;DR: Quick Briefing
- The setup: A mother vanishes from a supermarket parking lot in coastal Rhode Island, leaving her infant behind.
- The twist that drives everything: Lucy once confessed to her best friend Michelle that motherhood was her “one regret” and that she had imagined faking her own kidnapping.
- The structure: Four rotating perspectives—Michelle, Julia, Diana, and Lucy—plus a media firestorm and two cold cases from the same shoreline.
- The core subject: Maternal regret, the erasure of identity in new motherhood, and the speed with which the public judges women.
- Genre note: A psychological thriller with domestic suspense and a parallel police investigation.
Her One Regret Summary (Spoilers Ahead)
Spoiler warning: This section covers the plot, the reveals, and the ending.
The Disappearance
Her One Regret opens outside the Belmont supermarket in Narragansett, Rhode Island. Lucy Mendoza, a successful real estate agent, is packing groceries into her trunk while holding her nine-month-old daughter, Emma.
Minutes later, Lucy is gone and Emma is found abandoned in a shopping cart. Emergency vehicles cordon off the lot as a crime scene.
Detectives Joe Suarez and Marist question Lucy’s husband, Sam Rosen, an artisan frame-maker who was working alone in his garage. His alibi is weak, and he becomes the first suspect.
They also question Lucy’s best friend, Michelle Carvalho, who happened to be shopping at the same market. Under pressure, Michelle lies and conceals what she knows.
The Secret
Three months earlier, over wine in Lucy’s living room, Lucy had broken down and told Michelle that agreeing to have Emma was her “one regret.” She described feeling unsuited to motherhood and admitted to fantasizing about faking her own kidnapping to start over.
Elsewhere in Narragansett, freelance illustrator Julia Gallo is struggling with severe, untreated postpartum depression. She resents her baby son, Theo, and mourns the artistic career and independence she has lost.
Her husband, Marcus, a professor going up for tenure, claims to be a feminist while leaving all childcare and housework to her. Julia becomes fixated on her next-door neighbor, Richard, a vacant-eyed man who moves in and out at night and carries mysterious items into his basement.
One evening Julia leaves Theo sleeping to take a short walk with a baby monitor. She returns to find police and fire trucks outside after Marcus reported her missing, an incident that ends in a referral to social services.
Two Old Cases
Retired detective Diana González joins her former partner Suarez unofficially. She notices parallels between Lucy’s case and two earlier Rhode Island disappearances.
The first is Joanna D’Angelo, a working-class mother who vanished three years earlier and was assumed to have run off. The second is Maeve O’Neil, a 24-year-old who abandoned her baby on Narragansett Beach in the 1990s, returned eight days later, and drowned with her daughter a year afterward.
Michelle eventually tells her husband, David, about Lucy’s confession. Horrified, David leaks the story to the press and the police.
The Media Firestorm
News anchors and online commenters brand Lucy a monster, while a counter-movement forms under the hashtag #IAmLucy. Parenting researcher and podcaster Melody Cho publishes a newsletter titled “Regret: The Last Taboo of Motherhood?”
Melody hosts a live podcast with Michelle, who defends Lucy and insists that Lucy loved Emma despite her struggles. Meanwhile, Julia attends a postpartum support group run by the respected therapist Naomi Bresler.
Julia’s inner darkness deepens, and she fills a sketchbook with dark self-portraits titled The Anti-Mother and Monster-Mother. She visits Richard with a cake and spots what looks like a woman’s earring near his basement door.
Detective Marist reveals to Michelle that David had been exchanging heated texts with Lucy before the disappearance. Lucy had caught David secretly meeting another real estate agent to list the Carvalho house behind Michelle’s back.
Discoveries
Diana reopens the Maeve O’Neil case and tracks down Maeve’s former husband, Trey. He tells her that after the drowning, Maeve’s best friend, Rebecca “Becca” Abrams, vanished entirely after sending a farewell letter.
Diana realizes Becca Abrams erased her identity and became Naomi Bresler, the postpartum therapist. In Lucy’s home office, Michelle finds a hidden journal tucked inside a sample real estate portfolio.
The journal alternates between Lucy’s handwriting and a second person’s script posing questions about maternal regret. Michelle hands it to Detectives Suarez and Marist.
Julia breaks into Richard’s house while he is out and finds a locked basement door, an expensive hidden laptop, and an old photograph of a swaddled baby. She flees as he returns.
The Body on the Beach
A woman walking Narragansett Beach finds a human leg washed ashore in the storm kelp. Michelle assumes the body is Lucy and breaks down.
Richard approaches Julia in her yard and says, “They found a body,” prompting her to lock herself in a closet with Theo and call 911. The body turns out to be Joanna D’Angelo, missing for three years.
Police raid Richard’s house and discover he had held Joanna captive in his basement for three years until she died, a crime unrelated to Lucy Mendoza.
Where Lucy Was
Lucy is found alive in a shuttered room on a secluded property. Her captor is Naomi Bresler, formerly Becca Abrams.
Decades earlier, after her best friend Maeve drowned following her return to motherhood, Becca reinvented herself as Naomi to “rescue” regretful mothers. After hearing Lucy’s confession in the postpartum group, Naomi ambushed her in the Belmont parking lot and drugged her.
Naomi offered Lucy fake identification and an envelope of cash to disappear into a new life. During six days in captivity, Lucy refused to run.
She came to understand that while her regret and trauma were real, her love for Emma was stronger, and she wanted to return to her daughter and husband. Police and Diana locate the property after matching the handwriting in Lucy’s journal, and Naomi is arrested without resistance.
The Ending
At South County Hospital, Michelle climbs into Lucy’s bed to comfort her. When Sam brings Emma in, Lucy holds her daughter and feels her regret receding behind a fierce protective love.
Lucy asks to meet Naomi in custody and tells her she forgives her, saying the ordeal showed her how much she wanted her family.
Five years later, Julia has divorced Marcus, built an equal co-parenting arrangement for Theo, and found major success as the pseudonymous artist A. Silva. Her solo exhibition, MONSTERHOOD: Portraits of an Unmothering, creates a public space for women to discuss the complexities of motherhood.
Lucy, Michelle, and Sam gather for dinner with their growing children. When an older Emma asks whether her mother will ever tell her the story of where she went, Lucy promises to tell her everything when she is older.
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Characters in This Book
| Character | Role |
| Lucy Mendoza | A real estate agent in Narragansett who disappears from a supermarket parking lot, leaving her infant daughter behind. |
| Michelle Carvalho | Lucy’s best friend since college and the keeper of Lucy’s confession about maternal regret. |
| Julia Gallo (A. Silva) | An illustrator and new mother experiencing postpartum depression who investigates her neighbor. |
| Diana González | A retired police detective who investigates Lucy’s disappearance unofficially alongside her former partner. |
| Naomi Bresler / Becca Abrams | A postpartum therapist who is secretly Maeve O’Neil’s best friend and Lucy’s captor. |
| Sam Rosen | Lucy’s husband, an artisan frame-maker who works from the family’s garage. |
| David Carvalho | Michelle’s husband, who leaks Lucy’s confession to the press and police. |
| Marcus Gallo | Julia’s husband, a university professor working toward tenure. |
| Detective Joe Suarez | The lead local detective on Lucy’s case and Diana’s former partner. |
| Detective Marist | Suarez’s younger partner, who takes a cynical view of Lucy and Michelle. |
| Melody Cho | A parenting researcher and podcaster who publishes a newsletter on maternal regret. |
| Richard | Julia and Marcus’s next-door neighbor, later revealed as the captor of Joanna D’Angelo. |
| Joanna D’Angelo | A mother missing for three years whose body washes ashore on Narragansett Beach. |
| Maeve O’Neil | A 1990s case from Diana’s past who left her baby on Narragansett Beach and later drowned. |
| Emma Rosen | Lucy and Sam’s nine-month-old daughter. |
| Theo Gallo | Julia and Marcus’s nine-month-old son. |
| Susana | Diana’s wife, who urges her to stay safe in retirement. |
What the Novel Examines
| Theme | How the Book Presents It |
| Maternal regret versus postpartum depression | Lucy’s confession that Emma was her “one regret” becomes public, and commentators treat the admission as unforgivable while treating depression as an acceptable struggle. |
| Social pressure and female autonomy | Lucy describes being steered toward motherhood, and Melody Cho’s newsletter argues that women are criticized both for not wanting children and for admitting they regret having them. |
| Female friendship, loyalty, and betrayal | Michelle carries Lucy’s secret, lies to detectives to protect her, and is later betrayed when David leaks the confession to the press. |
| Identity loss and reclamation | Julia’s sketchbook portraits and Lucy’s captivity both center on women separated from the lives and work they had before motherhood; Julia later rebuilds her career as A. Silva. |
| Media sensationalism and public judgment | Lucy’s case draws news anchors, online trolls, true-crime commentary, and the viral #IAmLucy movement within days of her disappearance. |
| Grief, trauma, and repetition | Becca Abrams reinvents herself as Naomi Bresler after Maeve O’Neil’s drowning and abducts Lucy decades later, acting on the trauma of that loss. |
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Book Snapshot
| Genre & Subgenre | Psychological thriller; domestic suspense; crime fiction; multiple-POV suspense |
| Core Narrative Tropes | Missing person, faked abduction red herring, secret identity tied to a past tragedy, multiple interlocking points of view, parallel investigations |
| Tone & Atmosphere | Tense, emotionally charged, claustrophobic, introspective; coastal Rhode Island in late summer and autumn |
| Primary Conflict | The search for Lucy Mendoza, paired with the internal conflict over maternal regret and public judgment |
| Pacing Style | Fast-moving multi-perspective structure following the immediate timeline of a high-profile disappearance |
| ISBN | 978-1641296380 (ISBN-10: 1641296380) |
| Pages | 384 |
| Book Structure | 47 numbered chapters across four parts, plus an interlude, postscript, author’s note, and acknowledgments |
| Publisher | Soho Crime; published November 4, 2025 |
| Series | Book 1 of 2 in the Ocean State series |
| Author Background | Donna Freitas writes fiction and nonfiction, including The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano, and addresses motherhood and choice in her work. |
Books Like Her One Regret
The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano by Donna Freitas — The same author’s earlier novel, structured around nine alternate realities in which a woman navigates marriage and the decision whether to have children.
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder — A dark, visceral account of isolation, lost artistic identity, and rage in stay-at-home motherhood.
The Push by Ashley Audrain — A tense domestic psychological drama about maternal anxiety, generational trauma, and the expectations placed on mothers.
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng — A multi-layered mystery built around competing visions of motherhood, female secrecy, and class.
Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage — A domestic thriller focused on uncomfortable mother-child dynamics and psychological strain at home.
The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy — A missing-child investigation set in a tight-knit community of mothers, driven by group dynamics and hidden secrets.
Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell — A disappearance narrative that alternates timelines and perspectives while a family reckons with what it never knew.
Quotes from Her One Regret
“Something is still profoundly missing from our public discourse about motherhood; something still waits to be said, as if on the tip of the tongue.”
“Agreeing to have her, it’s my one regret.”
“Why is it so difficult to accept that maybe some women are not cut out for this? That no matter what they do it’s not going to be enough to fix things? I’m just not cut out for this! I know I’m not! I want to go back and undo it all! I wish Emma never existed!”
“First we tell her she’s wrong to not want the baby, then we tell her she’s also wrong if she confirms it was a mistake. We gaslight her twice.”
“A woman can wish to go back to her life from before, and she can still love her children.”
“I made three fatal errors in my life: one was choosing my former partner; the second was having children with him, and the third was having children at all.”
“I wanted to tell you that I do forgive you. That it’s already done. I understand why you did what you did. I really do.”
“Isn’t lack of desire a good enough reason? My own why has always been simple, and has nothing to do with money or climate change or anything else—I’ve just never wanted a baby. Period.”
