Length: 358 pages
My rating: 0.5 out of 5 stars
Small-town girl, Samantha ‘Sam’ Bronwyn heads from Texas to San Francisco with her best friend, Ginny, on an after-graduation trip. But Ginny disappears from the airport bathroom while wearing Sam’s letterman jacket. Suddenly, the guy who had been sitting next to her on the plane, and who had managed to carry a gun onboard, is her only ally. But she knows nothing about him or even whether she can trust him.
A dangerous serial killer escapes from San Quentin and is on the loose in San Francisco.
Spanish speaking, vicious looking men attack Sam’s hotel, the guns in their hands and tattoos on their body telling her that they’re affiliated with a notorious gang.
The FBI agent looking into the disappearance of Ginny’s case seems to know Sam’s mother.
And Sam’s mother, Clare Bronwyn, seems to be a whole other person – someone who knows too much about the events unfolding around Sam, someone who has too many secrets, and someone who Sam can barely recognize.
Sam does not know whom to trust. And every step that she takes pulls her deeper into a web of lies. Soon, Sam discovers that her life, and identity, isn’t what she believed them to be. And she may not live long enough to discover who she really is.
The Bottom Line:
A terrible waste of time, Daddy Darkest is a story that does not (even remotely) do justice to the psychological thriller claim and is actually painful to read at most parts.
My review:
A big ‘Thank you’ to NetGalley for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review (‘honest’ being the key word here).
Daddy Darkest begins with a lot of promise. It starts with Samantha and Ginny traveling to San Francisco, Ginny’s disappearance, and a shifty but somewhat-trustable man coming to help Samantha. All intriguing factors, and all with great promise.
Then, it goes back to the past, to the story of Clare Keely, which (as it’s painfully obvious in the first three sentences) is the story of Samantha’s mother. It’s about two chapters into the past when everything gets really bad.
At the outset, I should probably state that I don’t really have a problem with characters who are anti-heroes or anti-heroines. No one is categorically black or white. And gray makes books and characters interesting. I think ‘gray’ was what Ellery Kane was aiming for with Clare (Bronwyn) Keely. What she ended up with, instead, is a very whiny, annoying, selfish, bratty b***h of a main character.
Sure, Clare has a past – one that’s not too nice either. It messes her up a bit. But that is really not enough of a foundation to become the person she does. In fact, most of her personality traits were highly conflicting with one another. And much more than the ‘this is who I need to be, but this is who I really am’ conflict that complex characters have. Plus, who she needs to be and who she is are both really annoying. To put it down in some discernable order, this is what she’s like:
Oh! I’m so pretty, it’s such a curse. Oh! I’m so pretty, every man lusts after me. Oh! I wish they wouldn’t. Oh! I need some information from this guy, let me just flirt with him and sleep with him and he’ll tell me. Oh! I wish he wouldn’t touch me. Oh! Come, let’s jump into bed together again so I can get you to do what I want. Oh! I wish every man didn’t lust after me, it makes me feel uncomfortable. Oh! I’m so bad. And I love it. No, I hate it. Oh! I’m such a good girl, why don’t people just let me be? Oh! My beauty is my curse. Oh! My beauty is my power. No, curse. No, power. And so on and so forth. Until Clare Keely whined about everything she didn’t like, and everything she liked too.
There are characters who are tainted but who you call still sympathize with – but Clare Keely is not such a character. She’s just annoying, and there is a point where you just want her to shut up.
And Samantha isn’t the brightest bulb either. Likable at first, you can sympathize with her for a bit. Until Kane seems to absolutely lose the shape of the character and Samantha melts into some kind of mix of her old self and her mother.
As the book proceeds, all characters other than Clare sort of slip away from the limelight and become secondary, to the point that the book doesn’t even wrap up their story cleanly. The story actually had the potential to be multi-arced, but all of it is pushed to the sidelines while Clare Keely rambles on and on, until you just don’t care about any of those promising angles.
That, unfortunately, is how this book makes you feel – uninterested. I actually found myself physically straining to push ahead instead of just giving up (a lot of people gave up, so I know I wasn’t alone in this struggle). Then I reached a point where I started fast-reading a lot of the book to remain informed of the points that mattered (skimming over the whining and lamenting, which made up for a surprisingly large amount of the book throughout). I did this in the hope that the book somehow redeemed itself. Short answer? It does not, in any way. I actually think it just gets worse as it goes on.
So all in all, this book has no redeeming factors. There’s nothing dark or psychologically thrilling about it. The story isn’t really twisted like the blurb states. And the only thing criminal in it, is Clare Keely’s character.
I would recommend this book to:
- No one.
- Seriously. Pick up any other book. Literally, any!
I’m sure there are people who disagree with my view on Daddy Darkest. Drop me a comment or two below to say why. And, of course, say why if you agree too!
Thanks for stopping by!
– Rishika
The Book Review Station 