Just What Kind of Mother Are You? - Hardcover

Daly, Paula

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802121624 ISBN 13: 9780802121622

Publisher: Grove Press, 2013

Synopsis

Lisa Kallisto—overwhelmed working mother—is the not-so-perfect model of the modern woman. She holds down a busy job running an animal shelter, she cares for three demanding children, and she worries that her marriage isn’t getting enough attention. During an impossibly hectic week, Lisa takes her eye off the ball for a moment and her world descends into a living nightmare. Not only is her best friend’s thirteen-year-old daughter missing, but it’s Lisa’s fault. To make matters worse, Lucinda is the second teenage girl to disappear within the past two weeks. The first one turned up stripped bare and abandoned on the main street after a horrible ordeal. Wracked with guilt over her mistake, and after having been publicly blamed by Lucinda’s family, Lisa sets out to right the wrong. As she begins digging under the surface, Lisa learns that everything is not quite what it first appears to be.

In Paula Daly’s heart-stopping debut novel, motherhood, marriage, and friendship are tested when a string of abductions tear through a small-town community. Gripping and fast-paced, Just What Kind of Mother Are You? introduces an outstanding new thriller writer with a terrifying imagination for the horrors that lurk in everyday lives.

About this title

About the Author

Paula Daly lives in Cumbria County in North West England with her husband, three children, and whippet Skippy. She is a freelance physiotherapist. JUST WHAT KIND OF MOTHER ARE YOU? is her debut novel.

Reviews

*Starred Review* Skillfully working both sides of the street—crime fiction and women’s fiction—debut novelist Daly delivers a highly suspenseful tale by way of a harried housewife. Exhausted from working full-time at the local animal shelter while raising three children, Lisa Kallisto, who lives in an idyllic village in the Lake District, overlooks the fact that her daughter’s best friend, Lucinda, never arrived for a sleepover. To make matters worse, Lucinda’s parents are a very wealthy power couple who bring out all of Lisa’s insecurities over her family’s financial struggles. By the time it’s discovered that Lucinda has gone missing, a whole day has gone by. And her disappearance has come two weeks after another girl was kidnapped, drugged, raped, stripped bare, and left in the freezing rain. Told from three viewpoints, including those of the cold-blooded kidnapper and the highly competent female police detective, this intriguing blend of suspense tale and domestic drama, which has a number of delicious plot twists, will keep readers riveted. Not only is Lisa, who may be flawed but has a lot of heart, entirely relatable, but there is also much insight here into the power games that rule both female friendships and the relationships between husbands and wives. First-rate fiction from an outstanding new thriller writer. --Joanne Wilkinson

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802121624
• ISBN 13: 9780802121622
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256