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Book Summary and Reviews of Dear Daughter by Elizabeth Little

Dear Daughter by Elizabeth Little

Dear Daughter

by Elizabeth Little

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  • Jul 2014, 384 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Former "It Girl" Janie Jenkins is sly, stunning, and fresh out of prison. Ten years ago, at the height of her fame, she was incarcerated for the murder of her mother, a high-society beauty known for her good works and rich husbands. Now, released on a technicality, Janie makes herself over and goes undercover, determined to chase down the one lead she has on her mother's killer. The only problem? Janie doesn't know if she's the killer she's looking for.

Janie makes her way to an isolated South Dakota town whose mysteries rival her own. Enlisting the help of some new friends (and the town's wary police chief), Janie follows a series of clues - an old photograph, an abandoned house, a forgotten diary - and begins to piece together her mother's seemingly improbable connection to the town. When new evidence from Janie's own past surfaces, she's forced to consider the possibility that she and her mother were more alike than either of them would ever have imagined.

As she digs tantalizingly deeper, and as suspicious locals begin to see through her increasingly fragile facade, Janie discovers that even the sleepiest towns hide sinister secrets?and will stop at nothing to guard them. On the run from the press, the police, and maybe even a murderer, Janie must choose between the anonymity she craves and the truth she so desperately needs.

A gripping, electrifying debut novel with an ingenious and like-it-or-not sexy protagonist, Dear Daughter follows every twist and turn as Janie unravels the mystery of what happened the night her mother died - whatever the cost.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Little makes a thrilling debut with this gripping read. Fans of Tana French and Gillian Flynn are going to enjoy the smart narrator and the twists and turns in the case." - Library Journal

"[An] assured fiction debut... Little effectively intersperses outside perspective in the form of emails, text messages, and other communications in Jane's entertainingly caustic first-person narrative." - Publishers Weekly

"Janie keeps them all guessing... An unusual protagonist who will intrigue readers who favor strong, smart women." - Booklist

"This is breezy reading: nothing too deep or disturbing, and stronger on style than plot." - Kirkus

"This is an all-nighter... The best debut mystery I've read in a long time." - Tana French

"Really gutsy, clever, energetic read, often unexpected, always entertaining." - Kate Atkinson, New York Times bestselling author of Life After Life

This information about Dear Daughter was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

techeditor

It left me hanging
You won’t understand the title of DEAR DAUGHTER until nearly the end, and in the end you’ll be left hanging. I haven’t decided how negative to feel about that. Maybe three stars isn’t enough. After all, I did enjoy it until the end.

Jane has been in jail for the past 10 years. She was convicted of her mother’s murder, but she doesn’t think she did it. She doesn’t remember. But she does remember finding the body and hiding in a closet while she heard someone say things.

Because evidence was mishandled in her case, Jane’s lawyer, Noah, gets her out after 10 years. She decides right away that she needs to find out who murdered her mother. So, on the basis of things she overheard while she was in the closet, she travels to a small town in South Dakota. And now Jane has a mystery to solve.

This entire book takes place in about a week. Everyone Jane meets in the small South Dakota town, with one exception, has lived there all their lives. That’s not very realistic, but just go with it. It’s a neat little mystery. I didn’t find it predictable at all, my problem with many other mysteries. So I enjoyed it.

But it left me hanging. I had too many questions in the end.

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More Information

A graduate of Harvard University, Elizabeth Little is the author of the nonfiction books Biting the Wax Tadpole and Trip of the Tongue. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.

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