Book Review: Not Her Daughter

First, thank you to Net Galley and the publishers for the ARC of this book that I was given in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Instead of my normal one-sentence summary, I'm going to pose my summary as a question: what is our responsibility when we see a child being damaged?

Spoilers throughout.

I had kind of a hard time with this book. Ultimately, this book poses a question about the moral responsibility you have when you see a child who is being raised in a harmful way and Sarah is supposed to serve as a grown example of the toll that emotional and physical abuse can take. While I liked that the book asked us to consider a moral quandary as we read, I can't get over how creepy the whole premise is. Sarah sees Emma at the airport and witnesses her mother being mean to her. At this point, Amy is just mean, but not necessarily abusive. Then, months later, Sarah sees Emma again at her daycare. At her daycare where she is healthy and alive and playing. What is her next step? Because of her "connection" to a random child she first saw months prior, Sarah spends two days stalking a five year old girl to decide if she should kidnap her. That is intensely creepy and even though Sarah is obviously meant to be a huge salvation for Emma, all it did for me was make me wonder if she is mentally stable enough to raise this child in a lifestyle that's much better.

All of that ignores the next piece of intrigue: where does Sarah hide away with Emma? Oh, you know, she just drives eleven hours away and breaks into her ex-boyfriend's cabin to hide away with a five year old. Nothing off putting there.

 You know what else was really hard for me, though? Amy. Like I'm just going to lay my own gripe on the table: why does she basically have to be reduced to a fat woman who is somehow jealous of her five year old's beauty? I mean, I get that there's more to it than that and I actually thought Amy was pretty well developed (until the end) but I feel like that was such an easy answer. I don't know. Something cheap about it. I did love the past life regression stuff, though: very fresh and not something that's discussed much. Selfishly, I would have liked to see more of that, especially as it's summarized later, but I understand it wouldn't have really served the plot.

On the other hand, the book was fast paced and very enjoyable. You would think that a road trip with a Kindergartner would be pretty dull, but I think Rea Frey actually does a really great job with pacing and introducing just enough secondary characters to keep the plot fresh, so she definitely has some writing chops.

Solidly good book. 4/5