The Daughter by Jane Schmilt

Daughter by Jane Schmilt

Publisher: Penguin, March 2015

Genre: Fiction

Pages: eBooks, 352 pages

Rating: 2.5/5 stars

Summary (from chapters.indigo.ca):

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 thought she’d raised.

Review:

What just happened? I love me a mystery novel but man, this one was so frustrating that I sit here, having just finished reading it, not knowing whether I enjoyed it or hated it.

Normally, I love stories written from multiple perspectives. 'Daughter' is written all from Jenny (the mom's) point of view, but over a fifteen month time gap. One part of the story is current day, or a year after the disappearance, and the other is at the time of the disappearance. I found that I totally enjoyed the part if the story taking place in the past but the current day narrative was very slow moving and almost seemed unnecessary at times. As the story progressed, that got better but overall, I found the story definitely dragged.

When it comes to the characters, for the most part, I enjoyed them all. I thought Ted was a piece of junk and wanted to punch Ed on multiple occasions, but for the flow of the story, I thought they were all very well written. I related most to Jenny but as a mom, I wouldn't really expect much different.The part of the story that just fell flat, to me anyways, was the ending. I still don't really feel like we know what happened the night Naomi disappeared and I don't feel like we know what the future holds. I want more detail and given that the book is closing in on 400 pages, I think we should have some ideas that answer these, very important, questions.

Overall, good but not great... I never like finish a book and feeling unsatisfied.