Scan barcode
A review by merlin_reads
The Bad Daughter by Joy Fielding
2.75
This one was a little hard to rate for me so I just went with the middle 3. This was my first book from Fielding so I had zero expectations going in and overall, it was just okay and extremely predictable.
Robin hasn't talked to her sister in about 5 years - actually her entire family. When I say this family dysfunctional, I mean they are like up there with the worst of them. But when her sister calls to say their father has been shot, Robin heads back to Red Bluff to figure out what happened.
So I will say, this book was extremely easy to read. I flew threw it in about a day and a half. And despite all the issues, the underlying mystery of who attacked this family was compelling. I wanted to know who did it and if my theory was right (spoiler alert: it was). And while Fielding can write an interesting case, it was the personal connections that weren't all there.
Robin, the MC, was a mess. It's ironic that she's a therapist considering she has more issues than probably most of her patients. Then there's her sister, Melanie, who was possibly one of the worst characters I've ever read. She was mean for no reason. Oh wait, sorry her reasoning was jealousy. She was jealous of her sister so that gave her the right to be both emotionally and physically abusive to her sister. It was hard to root for either of them because Robin was so passive that there was just nothing there and Melanie just walked around insulting everyone. They were both every unlikeable to me.
Then there was the mystery itself. It was extremely obvious to me what happened immediately. I actually thought that maybe the author was throwing us off by being sneaky but nope, it was just that obvious. And it's not the predictability that bothered me, it was how it ended up being presented at the end.
Overall, this was an okay mystery but nothing to write home about.
Robin hasn't talked to her sister in about 5 years - actually her entire family. When I say this family dysfunctional, I mean they are like up there with the worst of them. But when her sister calls to say their father has been shot, Robin heads back to Red Bluff to figure out what happened.
So I will say, this book was extremely easy to read. I flew threw it in about a day and a half. And despite all the issues, the underlying mystery of who attacked this family was compelling. I wanted to know who did it and if my theory was right (spoiler alert: it was). And while Fielding can write an interesting case, it was the personal connections that weren't all there.
Robin, the MC, was a mess. It's ironic that she's a therapist considering she has more issues than probably most of her patients. Then there's her sister, Melanie, who was possibly one of the worst characters I've ever read. She was mean for no reason. Oh wait, sorry her reasoning was jealousy. She was jealous of her sister so that gave her the right to be both emotionally and physically abusive to her sister. It was hard to root for either of them because Robin was so passive that there was just nothing there and Melanie just walked around insulting everyone. They were both every unlikeable to me.
Then there was the mystery itself. It was extremely obvious to me what happened immediately. I actually thought that maybe the author was throwing us off by being sneaky but nope, it was just that obvious. And it's not the predictability that bothered me, it was how it ended up being presented at the end.
Overall, this was an okay mystery but nothing to write home about.