The Daughter

by Lucy Dawson

[Leah]

This was the kind of read that I don’t actually have a lot to say about it. Not enough for a proper review, but enough to let GoodReads know.

This is a fairly decent thriller - I liked the premise, and it’s always weird to see books set in 1999 when mobile phones don’t rule the world (ah, simpler times) but I did have some issues. FIRST, I’m really sorry but there’s no excuse in the world, ever, to not know who the dad is of your kid. (Excusing rape, etc) it’s just lazy to not find out. Like, did Jess sleep with them both in the same evening and her inability to be “well Simon’s definitely the dad” one minute and then be like “well I can’t actually be sure” made my head want to explode. I know Beth died. I know that gave priority to other things but TAKE A STRAND OF HER HAIR OFF HER HAIR BRUSH AND SORT IT, WOMAN. It just genuinely annoys me - what if Beth had survived? She would have grown up not knowing if Ben was her real dad? NO. That’s not fair and her dying shouldn’t have negated finding out who the dad was, but Jessica literally didn’t care.

I would have liked the book so much more if Jess held herself accountable for anything. Sleeping with a married man, while having a boyfriend yourself? Well it doesn’t matter, because you didn’t know he was married. 🙄🙄🙄 Yeah, but what about Ben? She just played the victim a lot and while I get some of her actions, I kind of just wanted to shake her? By all means don’t forget about Beth and it’s obviously a devastating tragedy but Beth permeated the whole book - again, not necessarily a bad thing, but Jess had a lot to answer for herself. And so did Simon before anyone says I’m just blaming Jess - he was worse!

The plot of the book was interesting, it was just Jess’s character. I wanted to like her and sympathise with her but she acted so childishly. The one character I really loved was Ed. He did some bad things, but he was the only man in Jess’s life who knew everything, he didn’t even know her when she was younger and *then* had to deal with everything that started happening. Man deserves a sainthood!

Lucy Dawson is a brilliant writer, I don’t deny that, I have loved her books so much in the past but this was a marmite read for me.