Darling Girls – Book Review

A thrilling page-turner by the New York TimesThe Soulmate, Sally Hepworth, about sisters, secrets, love and murder.

It’s not just secrets buried at Wild Meadows.

For as long as they can remember, Claudia, Margo and Jackie have been told how lucky they are. Rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother on an idyllic farming estate, they were given an elusive second chance for a happy family life.

But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. And when a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, these three foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?

With darkly comic timing and insidiously twisting plots, Sally Hepworth’s novels are guaranteed to keep you turning the pages . . .

This was a fantastic thriller and an unputdownable thriller book as well!

Norah, Jessica and Alicia are sisters but not biologically related. They used to live under the same foster house, run by Miss Fairchild and each of the girls were mistreated by Miss Fairchild. Now twenty years later, each of them are moving on with their own lives until the police call them. The house where they lived with Miss Fairchild was being demolished, but while digging, they found skeletal remains. As the sisters return back to the place, memories surface as they remember their lives under Miss Fairchild.

This was an intense reading. Please note, there are mentions of child abuse, sexual abuse when you are reading this book and might be a bit of sensitive topic to some. But other than that, the story is compelling and fast paced. The story is told in the POVs of Norah, Jessica and Alicia, each of them dealing with the childhood trauma they faced while living with Miss Fairchild. The story gets more interesting and intriguing with the discovery of skeletal remains and the fact that it might belonged to one of the babies that Miss Fairchild used to foster while Norah, Jessica and Alicia were living also made it interesting. Then there are snippets of a psychiatrist interview on Miss Fairchild, talking about her own traumatic experience during her teenage years. However, the ending was what actually blew me away–the ending was completely unexpected that I couldn’t even expect the ending to be that way!

Overall, this was a great book by Sally Hepworth and this book is worth 4.5 stars–unputdownable and page turner with twists and turns and emotional and heartbreaking to read.