DARLING GIRLS
Sally Hepworth
St Martins Press
April 23, 2024
368 pages
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Genre: Domestic Thriller
I love anything I have read by this author. I love her subtle writing style, full of nuances. This one was slightly different in writing style……not quite as subtle. But, definitely a page-turner.
In this story, Ms Hepworth tackles the foster care system. The main characters are three young girls who meet at one foster home and become “sisters” by circumstance. Their foster home is far from perfect but they are loyal to each other and give each other strength. The narrators change throughout the book from one sister to another. The chapters tell the past and the present.
The author interviewed 12 survivors before writing the book. Each one of them experienced “bewilderment, displacement and powerlessness” at being taken from their home and placed with strangers in foster care. While those foster parents may have been kind, these feelings followed them from childhood to adulthood. Sadly, the home the three girls in the story were placed in, was not a kind one. And, their experience affects their adult life.
The story has a mystery, discovered in the present day. There are lots of twists and turns. The characters are well-developed. The three sisters got closure at the end.
I hope this is not a spoiler: there was a final twist at the end, totally unexpected. Some of the other reviewers did not like this twist. Perhaps it was over the top. But, I thought it was reminiscent of the old Alfred Hitchcock tv series. (Yes, I am old!) Just when the viewer thought it was over, there was that final zing. Yes!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the Advance Readers Copy.
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