The Daughter
Penquin
August 28, 2014
Paperback
390
Jenny is a successful family doctor, the mother of three great teenagers, married to a celebrated neurosurgeon.
But when her youngest child, fifteen-year-old Naomi, doesn’t come home after her school play, Jenny’s seemingly ideal life begins to crumble. The authorities launch a nationwide search with no success. Naomi has vanished, and her family is broken.
As the months pass, the worst-case scenarios—kidnapping, murder—seem less plausible. The trail has gone cold. Yet for a desperate Jenny, the search has barely begun. More than a year after her daughter’s disappearance, she’s still digging for answers—and what she finds disturbs her. Everyone she’s trusted, everyone she thought she knew, has been keeping secrets, especially Naomi. Piecing together the traces her daughter left behind, Jenny discovers a very different Naomi from the girl she knew, has been keeping secrets, especially Naomi. Piecing together the traces her daughter left.
My Review:
My aunt lent this book to me while I was getting surgery back in June. She had brief told me about it and why I should read it. So I gave it a chance. Usually the thriller and crime novels aren’t my favorite, but this book proved to be interesting.
This book was somewhat confusing to me. It bounces back and forth between the daughter’s disappearance, a year later, a few weeks before, etc.. so it was difficult keeping the facts all together. Some of the clues and leads were difficult to keep track of.
I hate a love hate relationship with the mother Jenny. Jenny thought she was handling even thing very well, she has a busy life. She is a physician, loves to paint, and is raising three children. She thought her was divided and that she really knew her children, understood them, and was always there for them when they needed her. But when her daughter Naomi’s didn’t come home, everything change.
After the disappearance Jenny learns again and again all the things she didn’t see, the things she excused, or the behaviors she made excuses for. I can understand how protective she was, and why she was constantly looking for things they were not telling her.
Honestly the more I read about the daughter Naomi, the more I thought she was a little selfish brat.
Overall it was an ok read, not my favorite, but the crime/mystery parts were interesting. This book would make a great book discussion because of the many issues and revelations. Is it possible for a mother to have it all? In our busy lives how many things do we miss that we should be seeing?
Watch Out For: Mild language, sex, crime, abuse, adultery, and illnesses.
