Review - The Murderer's Daughters on Kindle

My Review – 3 1/2 More Sugar Please

When I first read the summary of this story I was completely intrigued, I love a good dysfunctional family story and also multiple voices telling the story. I enjoyed the emotional journey of the girls growing up and how they dealt with the fact that their father destroyed his life and their life. Lulu pretended her parents died in a car crash while holding on to guilt and Merry visited her father in jail and suffered silently. BUT, I have to say this one was a little choppy to me, I was disappointed, it felt like to much was going on but not enough detail or detail and you was wondering why the author was giving it. The story was in 3 parts and just didn’t flow for me. It was over 37 years, as children, young adults and then as mom and aunt.

Part 1 – the incident, you meet the mom, dad and sisters and the in-laws. Everyone deals with death differently, in my mind, no right or wrong but of course a lot of hurt and inappropriate comments. The girls heard whispers of ‘they are the murderer’s daughters’.

Part 2 – I loved it, felt kind of Grey’s Anatomy like with the emotional chaos.

Part 3 – I really enjoyed parts and not quite others and then just didn’t feel like the ending touched me in anyway.

I would be interested to see how Randy Susan Meyers grows as an author, this was a good try in my opinion.

NOTE – I haven’t been happy with my June reading, sigh. I picked up Horns by Joe Hill (son of Stephen King) and I am loving it, only on Chapter 8 so hopefully a good ending to the month.

Extended Book Summary

A beautifully written, compulsively readable debut that deals with the aftermath of a shocking act of violence that leaves two young sisters with nothing but each other—in the tradition of White Oleander, this haunting novel is a testament to the power of family and the ties that bind us together, even as they threaten to tear us apart

Mama was “no macaroni-necklace-wearing kind of mother.” She was a lipstick and perfume-wearing mother, a flirt whose estranged husband still hungered for her. After Mama threw him out, she warned the girls to never let Daddy in the house, an admonition that tears at ten-year-old Lulu whenever she thinks about the day she opened the door for her drunken father, and watched as he killed her mother, stabbed her five-year-old sister Merry and tried to take his own life.

Effectively orphaned by their mother’s death and father’s imprisonment, Lulu and Merry, unwanted by family members and abandoned to a terrifying group home, spend their young lives carrying more than just the visible scars from the tragedy. Even as their plan to be taken in by a well-to-do foster family succeeds, they come to learn they’ll never really belong anywhere or to anyone—that all they have to hold onto is each other.

As they grow into women, Lulu holds fast to her anger, denies her father’s existence and forces Merry into a web of lies about his death that eventually ensnares her own husband and daughters. Merry, certain their safety rests on placating her needy father, dutifully visits him, seeking his approval and love at the expense of her own relationships. As they strive to carve lives of their own, the specter of their father, unrepentant and manipulative even from behind bars, haunts them. And when they learn he’s about to be paroled, the house of cards they’ve built their lives on teeters on the brink of collapse.

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