WARNING! There will be spoilers in this review, so if you
are going to read this book, maybe you shouldn’t read what I’m writing. But I
personally think you should read this review and give ‘Dear Daughter’ a wide berth.
Basic premise of the story is this; Janie Jenkins is a LA IT
girl who gets convicted of the murder of her mother. After 10 years in prison
she is suddenly released due to some technicality to do with evidence tampering
or something. I don’t know, it’s not really gone into, neither is the 10 years
in prison that haven’t really changed her at all. Janie doesn’t quite remember
the night of her mother’s murder, so despite not being sure if she IS the
murderer or not she sets off to find out what really happened.
The whole world seems interested in what she’ll get up to and one hate fuelled blogger has offered up $50,000 for any information on her whereabouts. So she dyes her hair black and puts on a pair of glasses. The perfect disguise! And unsurprisingly the first person to see her recognises her immediately and she has to threaten him to keep quiet (he doesn’t!). So she heads off to a small town in South Dakota (Ardelle), because one of the three words she heard her mother say before she died was the name of the town! (Yes, really).
Luckily for Janie no one in Ardelle recognises her despite spending lots of time with a small cast of characters that all end up being somehow involved in the story somehow. Janie stumbles on clues like she draws them to her like some sort of clue magnet. I know I have a USB stick somewhere in my house, but can I find it? Can I fuck! Yet Janie finds a new clue in every photo she looks at, every book she opens and even when she takes a shit it comes out in the shape of an arrow that points her in the right direction!!! So she gets to this small town and finds out that her mother was actually someone who grew up in this very town, got pregnant ran away and changed her name. Obviously something happened in this town, they’d tracked her down and killed her. Don’t worry though, Detective Clue Magnet is on the case, joined by a ‘Mystery Inc’ (that’s a Sccoby-Doo reference) group of people including a cool, good looking cop, a couple of lesbians, a teenage rebel and a few dodgy seeming guys to keep you guessing which one of them did it (I won’t actually tell you which one though!).
The book isn’t badly written (in terms of style), but is full of clichés and coincidences. It’s complete trash, but it is quite enjoyable, Janie has a fantastic wit and the LA IT girl is a new voice to tell a crime novel through. But if you’re not the kind of person who occasionally likes to switch off your brain and watch daytime TV this isn’t the book for you.
The whole world seems interested in what she’ll get up to and one hate fuelled blogger has offered up $50,000 for any information on her whereabouts. So she dyes her hair black and puts on a pair of glasses. The perfect disguise! And unsurprisingly the first person to see her recognises her immediately and she has to threaten him to keep quiet (he doesn’t!). So she heads off to a small town in South Dakota (Ardelle), because one of the three words she heard her mother say before she died was the name of the town! (Yes, really).
Luckily for Janie no one in Ardelle recognises her despite spending lots of time with a small cast of characters that all end up being somehow involved in the story somehow. Janie stumbles on clues like she draws them to her like some sort of clue magnet. I know I have a USB stick somewhere in my house, but can I find it? Can I fuck! Yet Janie finds a new clue in every photo she looks at, every book she opens and even when she takes a shit it comes out in the shape of an arrow that points her in the right direction!!! So she gets to this small town and finds out that her mother was actually someone who grew up in this very town, got pregnant ran away and changed her name. Obviously something happened in this town, they’d tracked her down and killed her. Don’t worry though, Detective Clue Magnet is on the case, joined by a ‘Mystery Inc’ (that’s a Sccoby-Doo reference) group of people including a cool, good looking cop, a couple of lesbians, a teenage rebel and a few dodgy seeming guys to keep you guessing which one of them did it (I won’t actually tell you which one though!).
The book isn’t badly written (in terms of style), but is full of clichés and coincidences. It’s complete trash, but it is quite enjoyable, Janie has a fantastic wit and the LA IT girl is a new voice to tell a crime novel through. But if you’re not the kind of person who occasionally likes to switch off your brain and watch daytime TV this isn’t the book for you.
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