I've read "true" horror stories about mother-in-laws online. But it was interesting to read a mother-in-law horror story from the beginning. I guess it could be considered insightful. In here, the evil mother-in-law isn't really evil. Just lonely,trying to live vicariously through her children, and doesn't care about boundaries (mainly because her son refuses to set any). You start to sense this way before any the side characters in the book mention to the main character. I imagine that there are few horrible mother-in-laws out there that are like this, but I also imagine that there are truly evil ones as well.

Luckily, my mother-in-law is not evil, so I didn't pull any true life lessons from this book. But the book was an easy read with good secondary characters that I would have probably liked to have read more of.