ONLY DAUGHTER

This kind of book isn't something I would naturally gravitate to, in fact I wish I never read it, but did for a book club. This was my first (and last) psychological thriller/suspense novel so I have nothing to compare it to. The premise was intriguing and had promise, it is very readable and fast paced that's why it is deserving of its one star. I finished the book in 3 sittings, it would have been two but the last 20ish pages were extremely difficult to get through, with the gruesome animal cruelty, I was very upset. The book had too much detail where there was no need for it and not enough where there was a need. A lot of things didn't add up and I still have questions. Bottom line, I would not recommend.

Rebecca Winter has been missing for 11 years. The main character of the story watches one of those missing persons programs and notices how much she looks like Bec. So one day when she is picked up for shoplifting some food instead of going to prison she takes advantage of their likenesses and claims to be Rebecca Winter. Her plan is to take off as soon as she can but she sees an opportunity to live a happy life instead of the life on the street that she has been living. But what does this mean? Why is she getting these strange text messages? Who is following her in the black van? What does that strange thing her mother said mean?

It would be so easy to hate our main character for taking advantage of the missing Bec but something about the way the story unfolds makes us like her, or at least feel sorry for her. The chapters alternate with one chapter being in the first person from our main character and the next being in the third person about our missing Bec. The story moves quickly as our main character deals with passing a DNA test (yes, she believably does!), the police detective investigating the sudden return of Rebecca Winter, and the family and friends that must be convinced while at the same time in the alternate chapters we get closer and closer to the day that Rebecca disappears.

The story moves quickly and is so well done that I couldn't put it down. The ending isn't quite perfect but it's good enough when combined with the rest of the story to earn 5 stars. I think you will enjoy it.

I had to know! and I was not disappointed. Luckily the back cover snippet lured me in because the first couple pages were not enough to grab my attention, in fact I would have put the book down and moved on - so read the first pages and know that it gets a lot better. Excellent resolve.

I had hope for this book as I read the inro, but I'm afraid the premise is the best thing this one has to offer. I made it through the book, at times skipping paragraphs because it was mindnumblingly boring and redundant. The infeasability of the lack of follow-up by those in authority was difficult to believe, and that includes the parents. The author weakly tried to suggest many other suspects but it was very apparent what had happened early on. The ending (the last three chapters) was all over the place and was so disgusting and poorly written that I wondered what the author was thinking. Then I read her bio on the back page and felt she might have a mental disorder as it was just as "all over the place" as this book. ...or maybe she's just very, very ..um.. quirky. I will keep a look out for this author and give her another chance - perhaps she'll get better in time, or maybe this is just the kind of book she was going for; maybe a preteen would enjoy this type of rabble. I gave this 2 stars as the idea was an interesting one. Sadly that's the best part.

If you are used to fluff and enjoy thin stories, this is for you. If you however, enjoy thought-provoking books written by authors who believe their audience is intelligent, then this is not for you.

Well here's a creepy tale.

Ten years ago, Rebecca (Bec) Winter disappeared. Abducted? Runaway? Swallowed up by the fires sweeping Australia?

Then there's our nameless protagonist. She's run away from her irresponsible past, is desperately hungry, and gets caught shoplifting. Rather than go to jail, she pulls an ace out of her sleeve. Knowing she bears an uncanny resemblance to the missing Rebecca Winter, she claims to be her, escaped from her abductor.

The police go wild. They take her back to her "home" town, to be reunited with her grieving parents, back to the police detective who vowed he would find the missing teen.

Oh what a tangled web we weave...

Because now the new Bec must convince her parents and twin brothers, her best friend and best friend's brother, and the obsessed police detective that she really is Bec. Which is going to be really tricky,

The book alternates between the real Rebecca's story, moving forward through time to the "incident," and Imposter Bec's story, moving forward toward uncovering the truth... which is REALLY creepy.

While the story didn't pull me in, it is well-crafted. It moves forward with enough twists to keep the reader guessing. And it is creepy enough to make the reader cringe.

It has chapters of teens messing around that made me cringe, and did little to move the story forward, but they helped establish relationships. There were nods to the supernatural that did little to move the story forward either.

As another reviewer warned, there are scenes of animal cruelty that I, for one, could not handle. And while these scenes are integral to the story, they made me push the book away on more than one occasion.

I finished it because that was my commitment. Otherwise, I would have walked away.

Do not read this review if you don’t want spoilers. I’m not a fan of reviews that give away a plot - and I myself have never written a spoiler review. However, I don’t think I can really explain WHY I feel the way I do about this novel without going into some detail.

Only Daughter has a lot of things going for it - in the beginning. It’s definitely a thriller / mystery novel and the creepy level is high. The characters are laid out well and the story seems to be circling around some major plot twists. I could easily see this novel being a 4 or 5 star - I was loving it! But by the last few chapters I was really over this novel and my high rating fell right through the floor.

So - what makes you go from loving a novel to really wanting to toss it in the Did Not Finish pile? Good question.

First off, the characters that seemed to have so much going on just fell flat. They never really developed. All these mysterious people and all their hidden secrets and weird goings on just fizzled. The characters never evolved past the first quarter of the book. The creepy brothers stayed the creepy brothers. The “good girl” stayed just that. The weirdo mom was not much more than a side character filling the role of weirdo mom.

Secondly, the points that should have been twisty and huge ah-ha moments were not delivered well. I think some of that goes to the fact that the end of the novel just seemed rushed. The tension builds and builds with Who killed Becky? There’s a body hidden in the garage! Becky is actually NOT dead!! These huge reveals were crammed into about 3 chapters and just lacked all shock value. It was almost like the author had a list of “To Do Plot Points” to get checked off and only 50 pages to work with.

I can kind of forgive iffy characters and some disappointing plot delivery. However - what really killed this book for me is it committed the fatal sin of a suspense thriller. You can guess who did it from the word go. The author never manages to fool you or trick you into thinking there really are a line of suspects. She gives us plenty of opportunity - the brothers, the boyfriend, the best friend Becky was fighting with, the best friends creepy dad. But it’s a huge opportunity missed that the author never gives us enough reason to really doubt it’s the brothers.

As a reader of lots of thrillers and crime fiction - I’m pretty used to the seedy characters, violence, and shock that makes these novels successful. I’m not into horror but I’ve got a pretty good tolerance. However, what really had me nearly walking away from Only Daughter was the descriptive animal torture. I was done - so done- at that point in the book. I knew there was no way this was going down as a positive review.

For me personally, I just don’t handle it well. And my spoiler review is truly meant as a bit of a red flag to anyone who may find that offensive - as I did. I know PLENTY of you will tell me to man up about it. Point taken. But whatever, it just did me in and there was no going back. When the boys tortured and ruthlessly killed the family cat I was mad. I felt that the point could have been made without describing the act so graphically. And for that matter I didn’t need any description on the sounds of the dogs screams that they were mutilating either. Thanks for those images that will never leave my brain.

Overall this book started out really good. But I think the author just didn't quite get there. There were many attempts throw the reader off the plot but they were unsuccessful. The characters were underdeveloped. There were so many allusions to “other worldly” goings on - paranormal explanations of strange things but they kind of just disappeared - seemingly just forgotten about plot points. The last few chapters were a huge disappointment - the way the big reveals were just ho -hum laid out was a massive let down. An entire novel spent trying to figure out what happened to missing Becky was wasted when the author so passively delivered the HUGE fact that Becky was alive.

In the end - I’m really sad to say that Only Daughter is one to skip.

I was put off by the American trash-TV cover of this Australian crime drama/mystery, but took a chance based on a gut instinct. Glad I did. The unexpected naturalness of the prose, the spot-on temperament of the drama, and the organic interactions of 9/10 of the story impressed me. Once I started it, I was installed in the story till the end.

A young woman in her 20s knows she strongly resembles an older version of a 16-year-old that went missing over a decade ago. She pretends to be her when she is caught shoplifting, because she needed a bait and switch story to cover up her crimes—or, rather, to excuse for them. The ride to her “parents” was visually and viscerally riveting, and the novel unfolds in alternating time/person sequences.

The missing-girl Bec chapters (2003), told in third person, leads us from her life as it is up to the day she went missing. In between, also in the omniscient pov, it is 2014, and the masquerading Bec tells her story, also, and what led up to her impersonation. What is psychologically piquing is that the impersonator starts getting into the skin of Bec, merely by being with Bec’s family and friends, and sizing up the missing girl’s history with the people who helped make Bec’s past what it was. Moreover, her own history feeds into Bec’s.

We don’t really know if the pretender has a benign agenda or a wicked, self-serving one. Analyzing motives of her deception, and watching it steadily contour around certain facts and feelings, adds a genuine psychological weight to the novel. At times, I had to even remind myself which character was on the page, as the real Bec and the fraud possess some pivotal parities as time goes by and the drama steadily mounts.

When Bec goes missing, the parents, her twin younger brothers, and her best friend, Lizzie, are totally in the dark about what happened. The key investigator felt her failed the family by not solving the crime. After her “return,” he is back on the case, determined to find out what happened, but “Bec” is not forthcoming. And, of course, the woman imitating Bec is equally determined to find out what happened. All these various agendas, plus a few sinister texts that the pretend Bec receives when she is inaugurated into Bec’s family, and gets a cell phone, compounds the tension and entices the reader. Even when I thought I figured it out, I was still hedging my bets. The author did a fine job of staying a beat ahead of us. At the denouement, I was near-astonished, but the organic nature of people and events gave it an inevitability.

The author laid it on a wee bit thick/over the top near the end, but not enough to disappoint or dissatisfy. No gimmicks or phony props and contrivances, which is a big plus in this genre. I may not remember this novel for years to come, and it won’t make my best of the year. However, it is truly engaging. Curl up, invest in a day and a half, and let it unfurl. It was a real pleasure, and I’ll read this author again, for sure. 4.5 rounded up

Warning to animal lovers: Only Daughter contains 1 hideously grotesque image of animal abuse. It is not dwelled upon, but thinking of it weeks later gives me the squirms. It's bad.

How long can a 24 year old lookalike keep up her act of being the "found" missing 27 year old woman named Bec? In order to keep her own crimes a secret, she must uncover the many secrets of Bec's life and possible death. This includes fooling Bec's parents, twin brothers, and the original detective who led the case when Bec went missing 11 years earlier. The hardest test will be convincing Bec's best friend Lizzie.

Yet she cannot assume she's fooled everyone, and she has to cover up several mistakes as she learns more about Bec's life back then. And the more she learns, the more she wishes she could have stepped so blithely into a different woman's shoes.

Anna Snoekstra surprises with Only Daughter. The writing seems geared toward a younger audience (lots of "it was so weird" and teen fantasizing), yet is mature enough to be captivating. As she alternates between Bec's story in 2003 and the "New Bec's" first person narrative in 2014, numerous scenarios and possibilities spin through the reader's mind.

There are many twists and real surprises as we learn about the mystery behind these two young women. It's just a shame that they arise all jumbled up mostly in just a few pages. But that jumble still makes for worthwhile reading.

Have you ever wanted to be a tourist in someone else’s life? Just pretend to be someone else for a little while and escape your own everyday monotony? The main character in Only Daughter stumbled upon the perfect entryway for this situation and she thought it would solve all her problems. Only it just created more. Apparently, Only Daughter shares a similar plotline with many other novels, however the only similar one I have read is Sara Shepard's The Lying Game. Alternating time frames voiced by both the imposter and the missing girl slowly reveal what happened to a family's only daughter. I personally found it far-fetched that everyone involved in the missing girl's life accepted someone else and believed her identity so easily, even though many years had passed. I look at old photographs of family members and I would hope I couldn't be manipulated but I guess desperation and grief might make you believe just about anything to get some positive closure. Overall, I liked this debut and remained fairly engaged throughout. Although it didn't blow my mind, I would definitely pay the pricey $15 for a movie ticket when it comes to theaters. I think the plot line (and that ending) will play out very well on screen. If you enjoy the book-to-movie experience or if you have been keeping up with the influx of psychological thriller debuts, then check out Anna Snoekstra's Only Daughter.

This is a very well written and exciting novel, which takes place in Australia. A teenage girl goes missing, and 11 years later an imposter claims to be that girl. Oddly enough, the missing girl’s family accepts her as their daughter and sister, and then the plot starts rolling along.

The imposter tires desperately to discover what happened to the missing girl, at the same time she is trying to fend off being unmasked by a dogged detective. Many odd things happen as the book quickly winds its way to a most startling conclusion. I must admit that I didn’t see it coming!

Definitely a must read!