I have been loving Alice Feeney books for the past year or so and she has become one of my favorite thriller writers. The way she puts together a story, develops characters and plays the long game with the plot. It's incredibly interesting and you never know what you're going to get.
When I heard she was coming out with a new novel titled "Daisy Darker" I was, of course, thrilled. I love a locked door mystery and that's exactly what this is. The cover art also drew me in and I was really excited to get my hands on it.
Daisy Darker was released on August 30th and I picked it as a Book of the Month. I read it in a few days and it was incredible, though I found the ending to be a bit blah. Let's get into it.
Publisher's Summary
Daisy Darker was born with a broken heart. Now after years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in her crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. When the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours.
But at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows…
Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide goes out and all is revealed.
My Thoughts
As I said above, the book was really incredible. I was hooked from the first sentence and was immediately immersed into this intense world with these incredibly unlikable characters. The idea of being trapped on an island is spooky enough but with a family like the Darkers, on Halloween, while it's raining, that's enough to send anyone over the edge.
The book starts out normal enough... the family is estranged and they all come together for Nana's birthday but then Nana dies and one of them is the culprit. As the night goes on and the storm gets stronger, people continue to die but something feels off. Everyone is constantly together so how could one of them be the killer? There must be someone else on the island with them.
The story is told in Daisy's POV and you see her flashback to times when she was younger, giving you a good look into how the family dynamic came to be. It's really heart breaking to watch how Daisy was cast aside by everyone expect Nana.
Things continue to unravel while more people start to die until there's almost no one left. The twist that occurs at the end of the book, the big revelation and how everything comes to a close is extremely shocking. I didn't see it coming at all and I was left in utter shock.
As much as it shocked me, I didn't love it. I felt like the ending didn't go with the book and it felt very random but I think if you paid closer attention you might love it. I read other reviews where people saw the ending coming and they loved it.
Either way, I enjoyed the book so much. It's a fast read with excellent writing and hidden messages. It was creepy, scary, and thrilling. It was really wonderful and I cannot recommend it enough!
xoxo
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