Daughter - Kate McLaughlin
This is such a great book!!! I literally devoured it and didn’t want it to end. I can totally see this being turned into a movie or even a TV series. This is the second book I have read by Kate McLaughlin, and she is rapidly becoming one of my new favourite YA authors, as she is not one to shy away from tough topics that affect us all - on the contrary she creates hard hitting stories out of these exact topics.
Daughter is main character Scarlet’s story of discovering that she is the daughter of one of the worst and prolific serial killers of this time. One day she is just an ordinary teen worrying about school and boys, the next the life as she always knew it is blown apart by the knowledge that she never was who she thought she was. Her mother had created a new life for them with the help of the FBI years before, but when her father is dying in prison he makes one last request: to see the daughter who never knew she was his daughter.
While Scarlet has no intention of meeting her biological father, his request to see her comes with the deal that he will reveal the names and locations of other victims, but only to her. So Scarlet has to make a choice: will she go back into hiding, or try to get as much as she can from her father before he dies, so at least his remaining victims can be laid to rest?
I can’t even imagine waking up one morning and finding out that your father was one of the most scary, evil, and terrible people to walk on this earth. How does a teen deal with that? McLaughlin does an amazing job creating this story: Scarlet’s character development is topnotch, and everyone around her is well-rounded and believable - even Jeffrey Robert Lake, the serial killer, is more than real enough.
This book is marketed as YA, but as an adult I thoroughly enjoyed it and highly recommend it!
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.