The Daughter
A Novel
Published on 16. April 2024
354 pages
978-0-06-232048-3 (ISBN)
Description
A mother's search for her missing daughter yields disturbing results in this psychological thriller for fans of Gillian Flynn, Tana French & Ruth Rendell.
"A thriller you won't be able to put down." -Tess Gerritsen, bestselling author of Last to Die
Jenny is a successful family doctor, the mother of three great teenagers, married to a celebrated neurosurgeon.
But when her youngest child, fifteen-year-old Naomi, doesn't come home after her school play, Jenny's seemingly ideal life begins to crumble. The authorities launch a nationwide search with no success. Naomi has vanished, and her family is broken.
As the months pass, the worst-case scenarios-kidnapping, murder-seem less plausible. The trail has gone cold. Yet, for a desperate Jenny, the search has barely begun. More than a year after her daughter's disappearance, she's still digging for answers-and what she finds disturbs her. Everyone she's trusted, everyone she thought she knew, has been keeping secrets, especially Naomi. Piecing together the traces her daughter left behind, Jenny discovers a very different Naomi from the girl she thought she'd raised.
Jenny knows she'll never be able to find Naomi unless she uncovers the whole truth about her daughter-a twisting, painful journey into the past that will lead to an almost unthinkable revelation....
"Shemilt injects a great deal of suspense into her narrative in both time frames, even as her fluid prose eloquently captures a mother's grief and painful journey to self-awareness." - Booklist
"Jenny is a strong believable character... [her] journey is a memorable one." - Publishers Weekly
"A thriller you won't be able to put down." -Tess Gerritsen, bestselling author of Last to Die
Jenny is a successful family doctor, the mother of three great teenagers, married to a celebrated neurosurgeon.
But when her youngest child, fifteen-year-old Naomi, doesn't come home after her school play, Jenny's seemingly ideal life begins to crumble. The authorities launch a nationwide search with no success. Naomi has vanished, and her family is broken.
As the months pass, the worst-case scenarios-kidnapping, murder-seem less plausible. The trail has gone cold. Yet, for a desperate Jenny, the search has barely begun. More than a year after her daughter's disappearance, she's still digging for answers-and what she finds disturbs her. Everyone she's trusted, everyone she thought she knew, has been keeping secrets, especially Naomi. Piecing together the traces her daughter left behind, Jenny discovers a very different Naomi from the girl she thought she'd raised.
Jenny knows she'll never be able to find Naomi unless she uncovers the whole truth about her daughter-a twisting, painful journey into the past that will lead to an almost unthinkable revelation....
"Shemilt injects a great deal of suspense into her narrative in both time frames, even as her fluid prose eloquently captures a mother's grief and painful journey to self-awareness." - Booklist
"Jenny is a strong believable character... [her] journey is a memorable one." - Publishers Weekly
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Person
While working full time as a physician, Jane Shemilt received an M.A. in creative writing. She was shortlisted for the Janklow and Nesbit award and the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize for The Daughter, her first novel. She and her husband, a professor of neurosurgery, have five children and live in Bristol, England.
