Shallow characters with an inferior mystery component make for a disappointing read.
Joy Fielding isn’t known as the queen of suburban angst without a very good reason and pretty much guarantees her readers an addictive and suspenseful dose of family drama. Whilst her stories might be formulaic with a heavy dose of saccharine sweet melodrama overlaid, they are effortless page turners scattered with clues and red herrings throughout. Whilst her stories can often be anodyne and a stretch for the readers imagination they are highly compulsive reads. Having enjoyed her previous release, She’s Not There, and some of her excellent earlier efforts, The Bad Daughter falls woefully below her usually competent standards, being merely efficient at best. With a cast of extreme characters who feel like one-dimensional stereotypes and stilted dialogue devoid of subtext and real emotion, Fielding resorts to telling over showing for the most part. Readers who have encountered her novels before will likely be adept at recognising her familiar attempts at misdirection which in this instance feel clumsy and a little too obvious and make spotting the guilty party disappointingly easy.
With a premise that is worthy of salivating over, Joy Fielding’s central character is thirty-three-year-old Los Angeles therapist Robin Davis. Billing $175 per hour to dispense advice yet suffering from panic attacks and estranged from her family that remain in her remote hometown of Red Bluff for the last five years following her father’s hasty remarriage to her former best-friend, she has a number of her own issues. So when her older sister of three years, the acidulous Melanie, calls to impart the shocking news that their father, wealthy local developer Greg Davis and his much younger second wife, Tara, and her twelve-year-old daughter, Cassidy have been victims of what appears to be a home invasion, Robin reluctantly returns home. With all three left in critical condition suffering from gunshot wounds, Robin is left to confront the complicated history of the Davis family and make peace with her dictatorial father and come to terms with his capricious affections towards the children of his thirty-four year marriage to their mother and his first wife, Sarah.
Leaving her shaky relationship with corporate lawyer fiancé Blake Upton behind with the nagging doubt that he is cheating on her, Robin is in no state to handle the emotional strain of an acrimonious reunion with her immediate family. The sisters fractured relationship dates back to Robin’s birth and the blatant favouritism of their now deceased mother shown towards her. With every sentence Melanie utters littered with a customary barb or a snide remark, she is an exhausting character full of slights and bitterness. Melanie is soap-opera bad, putting down her sister at every opportunity with catty remarks on her imagined superior attitude and she positively radiates hostility. Robin is on better terms with younger brother, Alec, whose former engagement to his father’s wife, Tara, appears to give him a motive for loathing his father, less so Tara and a twelve-year-old child and if so, given they married five years ago, why has he waited all this time to act? As the sketchy details Alec reluctantly offers up to Sheriff Prescott place him firmly on the radar as perpetrator, Melanie’s eighteen-year-old autistic and awkward son, Landon, and his nocturnal activities and strange friend, Kenny, leave his aunt Robin on edge. Given that Cassidy has just come through a narrow escape with a bullet she is an extraordinary precocious and makes an unlikely twelve-year-old, able to compartmentalise and at ease tackling death and popcorn in the same breath. Disappointing, Robin is ludicrously gullible and for having a Master’s degree in psychology from Berkeley she appears to walk around wearing blinkers and although she comes out with the required therapy truisms she is completely lacking in life experience, somewhat hard to believe given the family and town that she grew up as part of. She positively sucks up the obvious poppycock that she is told prima facie and is extraordinarily wet behind the ears.
So whilst the premise of The Bad Daughter is tempting, the poor mystery and soap opera characters makes the result feel neither wholly mystery or family drama, but I readily admit that the novel is easily readable and provides the required twists and turns, albeit they feel a little unconvincing. Admittedly not all the surprises are wholly transparent and the early encounters are encouraging but with repetitive instances illustrating certain attributes of characters the surprises quickly become predictable. The result is an overwritten novel with shallow characters and frequent episodes of eye-rolling with the most disappointing aspect being that the mystery is so sub-standard and the attempts by Fielding to conjure up motives and circumstantial evidence linking the locals and family to the crime feels like overreaching. In short, a disappointing but readable novel of family dysfunction and sordid secrets with a final gobsmacking disclosure to blow the novel out of the water. Regardless reading a Joy Fielding novel is always an undemanding diversion and walk down memory lane and I doubt that I would ever stop indulging in her work! So whilst objectively The Bad Daughter is far-fetched and might not win any literary prizes, this will be of less concern to Fielding’s regular readers, myself included!
With thanks to Readers First who provided me with a free copy of this novel in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.
With a premise that is worthy of salivating over, Joy Fielding’s central character is thirty-three-year-old Los Angeles therapist Robin Davis. Billing $175 per hour to dispense advice yet suffering from panic attacks and estranged from her family that remain in her remote hometown of Red Bluff for the last five years following her father’s hasty remarriage to her former best-friend, she has a number of her own issues. So when her older sister of three years, the acidulous Melanie, calls to impart the shocking news that their father, wealthy local developer Greg Davis and his much younger second wife, Tara, and her twelve-year-old daughter, Cassidy have been victims of what appears to be a home invasion, Robin reluctantly returns home. With all three left in critical condition suffering from gunshot wounds, Robin is left to confront the complicated history of the Davis family and make peace with her dictatorial father and come to terms with his capricious affections towards the children of his thirty-four year marriage to their mother and his first wife, Sarah.
Leaving her shaky relationship with corporate lawyer fiancé Blake Upton behind with the nagging doubt that he is cheating on her, Robin is in no state to handle the emotional strain of an acrimonious reunion with her immediate family. The sisters fractured relationship dates back to Robin’s birth and the blatant favouritism of their now deceased mother shown towards her. With every sentence Melanie utters littered with a customary barb or a snide remark, she is an exhausting character full of slights and bitterness. Melanie is soap-opera bad, putting down her sister at every opportunity with catty remarks on her imagined superior attitude and she positively radiates hostility. Robin is on better terms with younger brother, Alec, whose former engagement to his father’s wife, Tara, appears to give him a motive for loathing his father, less so Tara and a twelve-year-old child and if so, given they married five years ago, why has he waited all this time to act? As the sketchy details Alec reluctantly offers up to Sheriff Prescott place him firmly on the radar as perpetrator, Melanie’s eighteen-year-old autistic and awkward son, Landon, and his nocturnal activities and strange friend, Kenny, leave his aunt Robin on edge. Given that Cassidy has just come through a narrow escape with a bullet she is an extraordinary precocious and makes an unlikely twelve-year-old, able to compartmentalise and at ease tackling death and popcorn in the same breath. Disappointing, Robin is ludicrously gullible and for having a Master’s degree in psychology from Berkeley she appears to walk around wearing blinkers and although she comes out with the required therapy truisms she is completely lacking in life experience, somewhat hard to believe given the family and town that she grew up as part of. She positively sucks up the obvious poppycock that she is told prima facie and is extraordinarily wet behind the ears.
So whilst the premise of The Bad Daughter is tempting, the poor mystery and soap opera characters makes the result feel neither wholly mystery or family drama, but I readily admit that the novel is easily readable and provides the required twists and turns, albeit they feel a little unconvincing. Admittedly not all the surprises are wholly transparent and the early encounters are encouraging but with repetitive instances illustrating certain attributes of characters the surprises quickly become predictable. The result is an overwritten novel with shallow characters and frequent episodes of eye-rolling with the most disappointing aspect being that the mystery is so sub-standard and the attempts by Fielding to conjure up motives and circumstantial evidence linking the locals and family to the crime feels like overreaching. In short, a disappointing but readable novel of family dysfunction and sordid secrets with a final gobsmacking disclosure to blow the novel out of the water. Regardless reading a Joy Fielding novel is always an undemanding diversion and walk down memory lane and I doubt that I would ever stop indulging in her work! So whilst objectively The Bad Daughter is far-fetched and might not win any literary prizes, this will be of less concern to Fielding’s regular readers, myself included!
With thanks to Readers First who provided me with a free copy of this novel in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.