I’ve seen Karin Slaughter’s books around for a while now but I never really picked them up. I started reading The Good Daughter on Hoopla on a whim because I’m always a sucker for family drama that involves estranged sisters, childhood trauma, and well, murder.
What happens in The Good Daughter?
The Good Daughter is about two sisters, Samantha and Charlotte, who have been through a harrowing and traumatic experience together when they were teenagers. As daughters of a notorious defence attorney who represented the thugs no one else would, it was only a matter of time before trouble came knocking on their door.
Twenty-eight years ago, a violent act shattered the lives of the sisters and their family. Now, trouble comes to their small town again and this time, Charlotte is a witness at the scene of the crime. A vicious attack also forces Sam to return to Pikeville. As the sisters grapple with the present, secrets long buried begin to surface, forcing them to confront their troubled past and mend their fractured relationship.
Review
I absolutely adore books about siblings. Estranged, close-knit, navigating trauma together — I love these stories in all their forms! In The Good Daughter, Sam and Charlotte are as different as siblings could be. Instead of coming together after their traumatic childhood experience, their relationship fractures clean, to the point where they even go no-contact with each other. Sam skips town as their mother always wanted, while Charlie stays back to become a lawyer and even work alongside — not with, as she emphasises in the novel — their notorious attorney father.
But when tragedy strikes Pikeville a second time, circumstances lead Sam to return to the small town she promised never to visit again and even go as far as to help her father out with a case. This is all I can mention here for want of spoiling the novel.
What I loved about The Good Daughter was how it effortlessly marries a thriller with family drama. There’s an explosion of gore and violence — so much so that some readers will definitely find it overdone for shock value — but at the same time, there’s so much heart. The horror and helplessness I felt while reading about the deliberate home invasion was as powerful as the tears I shed for the father I initially assumed I would hate.
“She had cried for the father she had lost.
She had cried for the father she had never known.”
The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter
We get both Charlie and Sam’s perspectives on the chain of events twenty-eight years back and this was where Slaughter’s writing chops come through. Every assumption the reader forms about Charlie from Sam’s POV gets taken apart and reassembled in Charlie’s version of events. As the two of them mend their relationship in the current timeline, they themselves realize this too and it only makes them come closer.
While I thoroughly enjoyed the book, I don’t know if I would recommend it to everyone. It can be very triggering with graphic themes and descriptions of sexual assault and gun violence. The content warnings include ableism, misgendering, miscarriage, and suicide. This book has some very dark themes and I would not recommend it if any of these are upsetting to you.
It also has a few twists that I would have called out for being purely for shock value if I weren’t so hooked with the story. Also, the legal drama surrounding the current tragedy fades to the background as the sisters focus on their reconciliation. It is all hastily wrapped up in the last chapter, putting a majority of the focus on the cold case from 28 years back. Again, no complaints because I was hooked, but I would have loved some parallels between the two so the current case wasn’t just a plot point to bring Sam back to Pikeville.
Overall, The Good Daughter is a powerful, engrossing read that’s equal parts emotional, suspenseful, and thrilling. Proceed with caution and if you have the right mindset for its dark themes, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
Fun fact about my reading experience
Tell me why I got my favourite romantic quote from a psychological suspense novel? There is clearly something wrong with me. Send help.
“I had never in my life met a woman like that. She was like a cat.
Dogs are stupid. This is a known fact. But a cat—you have to earn a cat’s respect every single day of your life. You lose it and—
That’s what your mama was to me. She was my cat. She kept my compass pointing true north.”
The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter
Yeah yeah, must be written by a cat person, but boohoo. This kinda-sorta cat person loves it!
Let’s chat
Have you read The Good Daughter? Which Karin Slaughter novel do you think I should pick up next?