Your life isn’t perfect, but you’re still happy. Your husband has stuck by you and he’s a good dad. Your daughter Becca makes your heart explode with love. And then, in the time it takes to say ‘bad mother’, there’s no longer a place for you in your own family. Your right to see your child has disappeared.
Life goes on in your house – family dinners, missing socks and evening baths – but you aren’t there anymore. Becca may be tucked up in bed in Rose Cottage, but she is as lost to you as if she had been snatched from under your nose.
Everyone knows you deserve this, for what you did. Except you’re starting to realise that things maybe aren’t how you thought they were, and your husband isn’t who you thought he was either. That the truths you’ve been so diligently punishing yourself for are built on sand, and the daughter you have lost has been unfairly taken from you. Wouldn’t that be more than any mother could bear?
I'd like to thank Noelle at Bookouture for inviting me to be a part of this blog tour and for my copy of Lost Daughter to review via NetGalley.
When we first meet Rachel she is a woman who has reached rock bottom, her marriage has broken down and she has left the family home and only sees her teenage daughter once a week, although we don't know the full story as to what had happened to get to this point. The first thing that struck me about this situation was the traditional role reversal as it's normally the father who leaves the family home and it was even more more confusing when we discover that Rachel had been the main breadwinner and it was her redundancy that had paid off the mortgage. Surely whatever she had done couldn't have been that bad for her to be the one to leave?
As for Mitch, Rachel's estranged husband, there was something about him from the offset that I took an instant dislike to. He came across as a weak and vindictive man, someone who seemed all too happy to play the victim card but only time will tell whether or not his actions were justified. I hated the way that he spoke to and treated Rachel, holding all the control and power over when she could or couldn't see her own daughter especially when Becca is in her formative teenage years which will have an impact into the type of young woman she grows up to be.
Rachel is trying to rebuild a life for herself, it's not the life she wanted but she's clearly trying to make the best of the situation she finds herself in. Living alone in a bedsit, she has taken on a new temp job where she works alongside Leona, another woman with a secret past. And it's through Leona that she meets Viv, a woman who has created a support group for mums who are separated from their children although there are currently only three members, Viv, Leona and now Rachel.
Joining this group was definitely the lifeline Rachel needed, a place where she can talk about everything and not be judged. Their stories were all different but they had that one thing in common, missing the child that they had given birth to and loved with all their hearts. I loved the bond she built with Viv especially, the mother figure she so desperately craved, someone who she builds a true friendship with and I'm glad that she had someone there by her side when her supposed friends had all but abandoned her.
The main story narrated is from Rachel's viewpoint, although we do also get to hear from Becca, Leona and Viv, with flashbacks back and forth to various dates in the past, which I will admit I did find very disjointed and jarring to read as they jumped back and forth all over the place. But piece by piece the story unfolds and we are made aware of the circumstances of everything that has happened up to this point and it was very much evident that there is the story that people want you to believe and then there's the truth...
Overall Lost Daughter was a well developed story with complex characters and some sensitive themes in particular mental health and the sense of loss/guilt.
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