The Other Daughter by Shalini Boland
Genre: Domestic thriller, psychological thriller
Read: 28th November 2019
Purchase: Amazon
(publication date: 5th November 2019)
★★★★ 4 stars
Shalini Boland is always one of my go-to authors. I love her style, her brilliant imagination and no one quite writes domestic or psychological thrillers like she does. Except maybe Kim Slater...lol But Shalini is the queen of killer twists and this book was no different. All throughout I kept thinking "how is she going to throw us a twist in this?" and without fail, she still manages to do it and shock us all at once!
Nine years ago, Rachel's daughter Holly was abducted whilst in the children's play area of a busy shopping centre. Rachel was enjoying coffee with a friend with their two sleeping babies, whilst two and a half year old Holly played her imaginative games inside a pink playhouse. Distracted in her conversation and some adult time, Rachel doesn't notice the hooded figure leading her daughter away with a cookie and the promise petting a real live bunny rabbit. Rachel's husband blames her for Holly's abduction and as the cracks in their marriage begin to crumble, Andrew leaves her and their baby daughter and sets up home in Spain where he soon has a new family.
London held too many memories for Rachel and so she packs up and moves herself and baby Jess to Dorset, where she meets Matt. Nine years later, Rachel and Matt are living happily together with the now 10 year old Jess and 6 year old Charlie. Life is good for Rachel now.
Then she meets Kate Morris outside the school gates one afternoon, who also has two children - Amy and Keiran - the same ages as Jess and Charlie. It's their first day at the school but Rachel is quick to ease Kate's nerves as they await for their respective children. But it is Kate's eldest daughter that captures Rachel's interest. Tween-aged Bella leans nonchalantly against her mother's car, tapping at her phone and wondering what is taking her mother so long. As soon as Rachel sees her, she is sure that Bella is her missing daughter Holly. Her emotional reaction is so visceral that she has no doubt at all. She could not mistake those green eyes, that heart shaped face and those long dark locks. Added to that, she is also the same age as her missing daughter would be now. Bella IS Holly. And it is this that sets everything that follows in motion...
Rachel becomes obsessed as she endeavours to find out more about Bella and what lead Kate and her family to move from London to their sleepy corner of Dorset. She invites them to dinner on the pretext of seeing Bella again, but is dismayed when Bella goes to a friend's house instead. So Rachel begins to drunkenly quiz her new friends at the dinner table about why they moved here and why does Bella not resemble them at all. Needless to say, Kate and her husband Shaun felt incredibly uncomfortable at her probing and citing not feeling well, left early taking their two youngest children with them despite the promised sleepover. But Rachel will not be swayed. She vows to collect evidence - enough to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bella is her missing daughter. There is just one problem...she has never told Matt about Holly...ever.
Rachel's obsession leads her to make some really REALLY stupid decisions. But she is on a mission to prove what she feels so deep within her soul...that Bella is Holly. And that Kate, or Shaun, stole her and have raised her as their own. Honestly, she borders on deranged. But then, having your child abducted when they were a toddler and never found is probably enough to make any mother a little unbalanced.
Told in two timelines - NOW and THEN - we also meet Catriona in the THEN chapters of nine years previous. It doesn't take long to discover how she fits into the story. And what a tale she tells! In fact, THE OTHER DAUGHTER opens, not with Rachel, but with Catriona...which I feel is a clever touch. Because as the reader we are drawn into Catriona's story and we feel her pain from the start that we almost identify with her and sympathise with her, that we don't even really blame her when she does the unthinkable. But as we watch her story unfold, our hearts breaks for Catriona. And all the while, in the NOW chapters, we are trying to work out what happened to Catriona and how she fits into the present day.
Then...just when you think you know where this is going...BAM! Shalini throws in one of her killer twists to turn everything on its head - and you are left wondering "what the...??" I honestly was trying to work out how this was going to play out as it really didn't seem to have anywhere else to go. But no, this is Shalini we're talking about. She does nothing normal that does not border on irrational or illogical. She takes a normal family...and throws them under, not just a bus, but a roaring train! She uproots everything you know and twists it beyond recognition. That by the end you are left breathless...
I have to say, I enjoyed the THEN chapters the most. I love finding out the who and the why of events leading up to the NOW. I found myself feeling for Catriona more than I did for Rachel, probably because Rachel did some incredibly dumb things that really seemed totally irrational. Her thought process annoyed me at times and I found myself thinking "you cannot be serious, woman?" Whereas with Catriona, she made one mistake - albeit a big one - but out of the best intentions...and spent the rest of her life making it up.
As my fourth thriller I've read by Shalini, I would have to be honest and say THE OTHER DAUGHTER is not her best but it is still one hell of a ride all the same! It will keep you guessing throughout and no matter how much you try and puzzle it together, you will never make the pieces fit. Shalini will have you twisted trying...believe me. And that's what makes her thrillers sooooo damn good! While the bounds of believability might need to be stretched just a tad with this one, it's still a compelling read that will have you up all night trying to figure it out.
You know that when you pick up a Shalini book, you are going to get one hell of a thrill ride and THE OTHER DAUGHTER was no different. And although I personally didn't think it was her best, I still enjoyed it just the same. I just felt the chapter after the "big reveal" was a little rushed with tying up loose ends. I wondered if a little more depth could have been put into them, considering how much we had invested into the whole story. The Epilogue was a fitting conclusion to the whole "debacle" though I'm not sure I even liked the narrator of that chapter as she didn't feel "real", if that makes any sense.
Either way, THE OTHER DAUGHTER is an intriguing, compelling, unputdownable tale that will have you reading long into the night until the finish.
I have no hesitation in recommending this book because as with any Shalini book, without a doubt, you will be in for thrill ride like no other!
I would like to thank #ShaliniBoland, #NetGalley and #Bookouture for an ARC of #TheOtherDaughter in exchange for an honest review.
No comments:
Post a Comment