Ballantine Books, 368 pp.
Published February 27, 2018
DISCLAIMER: I received a free digital ARC of this book from Ballantine Books via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
Summary (via Goodreads): What first appears to be a random home invasion reveals a family's dark secrets in this domestic ticking-clock suspense from the New York Times bestselling author of See Jane Run.
A hostile relationship with her sister and a complicated past with her father's second wife have kept Robin estranged from her family for many years. But when her father's new family is attacked in their house, with her father, his wife, and young daughter in critical condition in the hospital, she returns home to await their fate and hopefully mend fences. It looks like a random robbery gone awry, but as Robin spends more time with her family members, she learns they all had their secrets -- and one of those secrets may have put them all in horrible danger.
My thoughts: The Bad Daughter is both simple and difficult to review. Every component—from characters to prose to plot—settles comfortably in the realm of just-good-enough, without ever aspiring towards the exceptional. Fielding avoids overwrought metaphors or unnecessarily complicated sentences; she tells her story aptly, but you wouldn't miss a wealth of detail by skimming the pages either. Her characters are all distinct, if a little predisposed to the melodramatic. And while she plants several red herrings along the way I'll admit I correctly guessed whodunit around the novel's halfway point.
It is, quite plainly, a resoundingly average thriller.
Three daughters—two adult siblings and an adolescent step-sister—all contend for the "bad" moniker of the novel's title. Protagonist Robin foists the designation onto herself much more than she deserves; her flight from the increasingly strained relationships with her family causes her to miss much of her mother's final months combating a fatal illness. This compounds the hostility of older sister Melanie, whose barbed comments and pointed emotional distance have pained Robin since childhood. Cassidy, their twelve-year-old step-sister, awakens in the hospital displaying a curious combination of maturity and childlike dependence that may or may not stem from her recent trauma. Her wild oscillations in temperament and Melanie's unceasing defensiveness both strain credulity, although Robin's struggles with anxiety read much closer to reality.
The ancillary cast of male characters, including Robin's fiancee, the county sheriff, and Melanie's autistic son and his only friend, are adequate place-fillers in their respective roles. Fielding's depiction of the spectrum was respectful, if a little stereotypical, although readers with more personal experience should judge for themselves.
I found each false lead only mildly distracting, particularly once I had settled on my guess for the final reveal. It provides satisfactory closure to the "home invasion" mystery, although one revelation within the larger solution came across as jarring and unnecessary.
Perhaps its obvious from the previous paragraphs, but books as thoroughly average as The Bad Daughter present the unique problem of having neither particularly good nor bad qualities to single out in a review. None of the faults I found in it were egregious enough to warrant a DNF and none of the positives were compelling enough that I would seek out another of Ms. Fielding's novels.
Perhaps this all amounts to damning The Bad Daughter with faint praise. I don't feel as though I wasted the two days of reading time devoted to it, but I suspect that soon after writing this review many of the book's details will irretrievably fade from memory. Genre junkies will probably find this a quick and satisfying read, but I would caution them to forgo the hardback in favor of less costly options.
RATING: ★★★
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