Quick Synopsis

From the New York Times best-selling author of Reconstructing Amelia: A daughter races to uncover her mother’s secret life in the wake of her disappearance in this “breathless, shocking thriller.” 

Publisher’s Synopsis

When Cleo, a student at NYU, arrives late for dinner at her childhood home in Brooklyn, she finds food burning in the oven and no sign of her mother, Kat. Then Cleo discovers her mom’s bloody shoe under the sofa. Something terrible has happened.

But what? The polar opposite of Cleo, whose “out of control” emotions and “unsafe” behavior have created a seemingly unbridgeable rift between mother and daughter, Kat is the essence of Park Slope perfection: a happily married, successful corporate lawyer. Or so Cleo thinks.

Kat has been lying. She’s not just a lawyer; she’s her firm’s fixer. She’s damn good at it, too. Growing up in a dangerous group home taught her how to think fast, stay calm under pressure, and recognize a real threat when she sees one. And in the days leading up her disappearance, Kat has become aware of multiple threats: demands for money from her unfaithful soon-to-be ex-husband; evidence that Cleo has slipped back into a relationship that’s far riskier than she understands; and menacing anonymous messages from her past—all of which she’s kept hidden from Cleo . . . 

Like Mother, Like Daughter is a thrilling novel of emotional suspense that questions the damaging fictions we cling to and the hard truths we avoid. Above all, it’s a love story between a mother and a daughter, each determined to save the other before it’s too late.

Book Review

Have you ever finished a book and realized you have virtually no thoughts on it? That is where I am with Like Mother, Like Daughter.

Like Mother, Like Daughter is about a daughter’s quest to locate her missing mother, with whom she has a fraught relationship. While the novel’s premise did not sound like anything different or super exciting, I was motivated to pick up this novel because Kimberly McCreight wrote one of my favorite thrillers, A Good Marriage.

I think the first place Like Mother, Like Daughter went wrong was that it did not have a thriller’s sense of urgency. McCreight does not allow readers to develop an attachment to the mother, Kat, before she disappears. So when some of her blood (seemingly a small amount) was found and she could not be reached, I did not care all that much that she was gone. In addition, there are so many potential explanations for this, both nefarious and innocent, that it felt a little outrageous to immediately assume she has gone missing. Without any evidence that something illegal has taken place, there was little to propel the narrative forward and even less to do so quickly.

Told from dual points-of-view, Like Mother, Like Daughter is packed with narrative layers that sometimes overshadow the main storyline. While interweaving so many layers provided a large number of possible explanations to Kat’s disappearance, I am not sure that it added compelling complexity to the plot. Instead, the story was pulled in a multitude of directions without any one direction being nuanced or truly interesting. In the end, the novel’s twist did not surprise me; I thought it seemed rather obvious. As a result, the story never reached a climax and the ending was lackluster.

One of the stronger points of Like Mother, Like Daughter is the relationship between Kat and her daughter, Cleo. I found the relationship to be the most strongly developed portion of the book. It also seemed to be the hidden focus with Cleo uncovering truths in her investigation that highlighted facts that were often counter to Cleo’s assumptions about her mother. The only problem with this was that I had instinctually given Kat the benefit of the doubt her daughter did not. Consequently, I was unimpressed with Cleo’s growth and found her to be a naive and ungrateful daughter.

Overall, Like Mother, Like Daughter is a mixed bag and not a story I will remember. If you are interested in mother-daughter relationships and know that this novel is paced more like a mystery, you may enjoy it.

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