What's your worst nightmare? Lisa Kallisto is living one of hers.
Lisa tries hard. Very, very hard. Running her family and staying on top of her job is hard work, though , and leaves her permanently frazzled. Her best friend Kate, however, seems to have it all. She lives in a beautiful house with an attentive husband and is the kind of mother Lisa dreams of being. Kate manages everything perfectly, from washing to school fêtes; she's the centre of her children's world.
Which only makes Lisa feel even more wretched when Kate's daughter Lucinda goes missing. Lucinda is supposed to be staying with Lisa's daughter, Sally, after school. But Sally doesn't go to school that day and Lisa, permanently frazzled as she is, simply forgets that Lucinda is supposed to be at her house. So when Lucinda doesn't arrive at school the next day, she's already been missing for hours. To make matters even worse, another local girl recently went missing and turned up traumatised and half naked.
Lisa determines that she will save Lucinda. But it's not easy. Her family and Kate's family come under extreme pressure and threaten to burst apart at the seams.
This pacy thriller stems from this simple but brilliant question: what if it was your fault that your best friend's child was abducted? How could you live with the guilt? Anyone reading the opening chapters, parent or not, will feel their stomach lurch with Lisa's as her nightmare unfolds.
Daly also explores modern families and the desperate striving for a Cath-Kidston esque domestic perfection that drives many women to run themselves ragged. In the compelling opening chapter, Lisa complains about feeling overwhelmed, but realises that her life looks perfect from the outside. And as the story develops she finds out a lot more about what it takes to keep Kate's supposedly perfect life on track. Daly is good, too, on the jealousy lurking in friendships. Lisa can't help but envy Kate's lifestyle and Kate herself.
I finished this book in a day and would have finished it even more quickly if I hadn't had to go to work! It's pacy and twisty, with a real shock at the end. Thriller fans will love it, and so will fans of psychological crime fiction written by the likes of Sophie Hannah or Nicci French. A very promising debut indeed.
I must thank Alison Barrow at Transworld, who kindly provided me with a review copy. Just What Kind Of Mother Are You will be published in April 2013.
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