On Maggie’s Watch by Ann Wertz Garvin is supposed to be amusing, based on the quotes on the back cover, but I found it to be heavier than I anticipated. Her obsession with the Neighborhood Watch strains her friendship and her marriage, makes her the primary contact for the neighborhood busybody, and prompts a flirtation with an attractive handyman. But just watching him isn’t enough for Maggie. Maggie begins staking out the predator’s home, even riding her bike by his house in the dead of night.
When Maggie discovers via the Internet that a sex offender lives too close for comfort, she decides that she can’t just sit and do nothing she has to protect her child, after all. Not used to sitting still and needing to get her mind off her first pregnancy - which resulted in a stillborn daughter and much emotional trauma - her best friend, Julia, suggests she revive the Neighborhood Watch program. In preparation for the birth of her child, Maggie Finley and her husband, Martin, return to her small hometown in Wisconsin, residing on a street she describes as “dressed up like Norman Rockwell but with Norman Bates potential” (page 82). And the baby, she reminded herself, was the point of everything. If she didn’t iron out the pleats in her brain, she would be too spacey, too wishy-washy to care for a baby. She had to sort out these ping-ponging emotions and plans.
She drove slowly the rest of the way home and steered the car carefully up her driveway. Without looking back, Maggie accelerated away from the scene, hoping she hadn’t called too much attention to herself.
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