The Good Daughter: A Novel

Sisters Samantha ("Sam") and Charlotte ("Charlie") Quinn survived something truly horrific in their early teens. Even though they're both successful attorneys now, they've spent the last twenty eight years trying to cope with the events that transpired on 3-16-89. Though mental, physical and emotional anguish, self-destructive behavior, and a cold chasm separated the sisters, as did the miles, another tragedy brought them back together where their nightmare began all those years ago. As someone who comes from a dysfunctional family myself, I found the tension between Sam and Charlie incredibly realistic. Their sniping, resentment, annoyances, unspoken thoughts, and temperamental outbursts were spot on. The dialog between these two sisters is simply brilliant. And speaking of brilliant, the two girls are that and then some, especially Samantha. They got their smarts from their mother, "Gamma," [for gamma rays] a very high intellectual who worked for NASA at one time, and who is so smart she can't fathom making spaghetti or doing housework. Naturally, the concept of God is beyond her comprehension. Samantha came home from school one day to find her mother working out a huge mathematical equation on the kitchen window trying to figure out why her cake fell. While both her daughters also are very smart, it's Sam who is most like her cold, elitist, genius mother, and they often clash. Charlie, on the other hand, also is super smart but she's the girl everyone likes: popular in school, lots of friends, and all that. She is everything Sam is not, including "Daddy's little girl." Daddy is Rusty, a criminal defense lawyer in the small Georgia town of Pikeville, where he's loathed by the locals for successfully representing murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and every low-life imaginable. Rusty apparently is "OCD," unable to sit still, always talking, tapping, jangling or doing something, anything, including chain smoking despite serious heart problems. He "loves his daughters the way they need to be loved" but do they really know that? When tragedy strikes that family, it is indirectly because of Rusty Quinn. While I obviously loved this simultaneously sad, gripping, hilarious story, two things disappointed me. One is the language, a pet peeve of mine and a recurring complaint in all my reviews. While some profanity and obscenities would've been understandable for a couple of the characters in this book, it simply makes no sense to me that two uber-bright attorneys, Samantha and Charlotte, would resort to such language when they clearly are quite capable of expressing themselves [well above the average person] without the use of expletives. My second disappointment came near the end when a one word misquote of scripture nearly blew the whole story for me. Apparently this was a huge gaffe on the part of the author because the scripture verse is given in two translations, the last being the clearest, and also where that one word was apparently accidentally omitted. While I can't explain the context without giving away both the story and the ending, suffice it to say a character supposedly did something by following this particular verse, which, as I noted, was misquoted, and therefore, wrong. And that changed everything. It took me a few minutes to overcome it, but the rest of the book was such a good read, I just went with it, and didn't let that error spoil it for me. So, in a nutshell, yes, I do highly recommend "The Good Daughter." And I challenge each of you readers to decide for yourselves which one actually is the good daughter. Happy reading.

28 years ago, Charlie's life was torn apart. Some bad men were angry at her father, and took it out on his family instead. Charlie, her sister Samantha, and their mother were attacked in their house, and their mother was murdered. Now, almost three decades later, Charlie is still living in the same town, working as a lawyer, and trying to save her failing marriage. In a moment of weakness, Charlie has a one night stand, which sets up a series of events that lead Charlie to the local school where an active shooter is on campus. Charlie has to navigate the most recent tragedy, but also has to deal with the resurfacing emotions and memories of the events that took place all those years ago. As secrets come to light, Charlie has to fact her past in order to move forward. I became an instant fan of Slaughter's after reading her book Pretty Girls last year, and while I haven't read the rest of the books she's written (soon, I swear!) I couldn't wait to get my hands on The Good Daughter! Before I read this one, I did read the prequel novella, called Last Breath, which I loved. The Good Daughter felt quite different than Pretty Girls did, in my opinion. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I've come to know Slaughter as an author who writes very graphic, fast paced thriller, and while there were some graphic points in this book, they weren't as bad as the ones in Pretty Girls. While overall, I did enjoy the story, and particularly loved Charlie as our main character, I found some of the middle portions of the book dragging a little bit. This book is over 500 pages, and I felt like it could have been shortened while maintaining the key elements. One of the things I did really like were the flashbacks to Charlie's past, where we are able to put the pieces of the puzzle together to fully understand what happened that night 28 years ago. There were little hidden nuggets in each flashback, and I loved that! Another thing I loved about the book were the twists that happened! I had some ideas and some theories, but I wasn't even close to figuring everything out, and I always love when that happens. I felt like there were almost two parts to the story - the past and the present, and each one had their own twists, which I thought was really cool. Overall, Pretty Girls remains my favorite Slaughter book, but I definitely loved this one and recommend it to fans of psychological thrillers! I will give a quick trigger warning since I know this can be a big one for people, but the book does contain the rape of a young girl. It has it's own scene (more than a passing mention) and is a little graphic, more around the aftermath, but is not a large part of the story (just a few pages, and then some mentions of it), so if that's something you can't stomach, then beware before you start reading! I've moved the rest of Slaughter's books closer to the top of my TBR list, so I'm hoping to get to those soon! Overall, I rated this one 4/5 stars, specifically because I felt like the pacing in the middle was a little slow.

An excellent book, I first read a Will Trent book by her, because I watch the TV series. I like her work very much. Good stories, always interesting. Love the characters in this book, I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys mystery and thrilling adventures.

Excellent I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It had some twists and turns very heartfelt. I highly recommend it enjoy everyone.

Great read!! It was hard to put down and somewhat long; but it was very easy to get sucked into this great book. There are two mysteries, one from the past and one from the current day. I honestly never could have imagined how deep this families’ secrets were! The three star rating is due to a lengthy description of an event at the very onset of the book. This same event is then told two more times; yes, from new perspectives with some new important details but the author could have saved the reader a lot of time by summarizing the event the second and third time with only heavily, detailed, descriptions of the new, relevant information/details. Instead, however, the reader is forced to read verbatim, the same very, detailed, oriented rendering of this event two more times with the exact word for word writing. It’ll leave the reader experiencing major deja vu! Highly recommend this book and author; just need to be a patient reader!

Muy bueno, entretenido.

Früher häufiger, Heut zu Tage seltener geniesse ich gerne ein Buch sei es Spionage Crime. Karin Slaughter gehört für mich zu eine Autorin welche ich mit Freude lese, allerdings nur in Original Sprache

Loved it from start to finish. Karen Slaughter never fails to thrill! The twists and turns were expertly written over and over again.

初めてKarin Slaughterの作品を読みました。推理小説というジャンルでは、くくれないような奥深い作品でした。単純な犯人探しではないんですよね。

I don't find good at all. Is really very dragging. I'd definitely not a page turnner book for me I am sorry is maybe not my type as I am more of thriller book person.