Only Daughter by Anna Snoekstra

Thank you to Anna Snoekstra, NetGalley and Harlequin for providing a copy of Only Daughter in exchange for an honest review.

This book has an original and an interesting concept: a teenager goes missing and a decade later a con-woman claims to be the long lost girl and is welcomed back by family and friends. The story is told from two viewpoints and timelines: Bec, the missing girl in 2003; and the interloper in 2014. This works well to build background and raise questions about what happened to Bec and how it will pan out.

Unfortunately, I found the writing a little uneven: sometimes it was quite pacey and exciting but at other times it seemed to plod. Some of the procedural aspects were naive or simplistic and the writing could be immature. Some plot points were not followed up satisfactorily and others seemed to come out of nowhere; the ending particularly felt rushed. However, the main issue with the book is the huge suspension of disbelief required for large parts of the story.

Despite that, it did keep me turning the pages, it did have a resolution, to a point, and it should be applauded for an original idea. 2.5/5