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Like Mother, Like Daughter by Kimberly McCreight

Thriller

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Repeat author

Kimberly McCreight is back at Book of the Month – other BOTMs include A Good Marriage.

by Kimberly McCreight

Excellent choice

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Quick take

When her mother abruptly goes missing, a college student must quickly piece together the mystery left in her wake.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Multiple_Viewpoints

    Multiple viewpoints

  • Illustrated icon, Nonlinear_Timeline

    Nonlinear timeline

  • Illustrated icon, Mama_Drama

    Mama drama

  • Illustrated icon, NYC

    NYC

Synopsis

When Cleo, a student at NYU, arrives late for dinner at her childhood home in Brooklyn, she finds food burning in the oven and no sign of her mother, Kat. Then Cleo discovers her mom’s bloody shoe under the sofa. Something terrible has happened.

But what? The polar opposite of Cleo, whose “out of control” emotions and “unsafe” behavior have created a seemingly unbridgeable rift between mother and daughter, Kat is the essence of Park Slope perfection: a happily married, successful corporate lawyer. Or so Cleo thinks.

Kat has been lying. She’s not just a lawyer; she’s her firm’s fixer. She’s damn good at it, too. Growing up in a dangerous group home taught her how to think fast, stay calm under pressure, and recognize a real threat when she sees one. And in the days leading up her disappearance, Kat has become aware of multiple threats: demands for money from her unfaithful soon-to-be ex-husband; evidence that Cleo has slipped back into a relationship that’s far riskier than she understands; and menacing anonymous messages from her past—all of which she’s kept hidden from Cleo...

Content warning

This book contains scenes that depict sexual assault and mentions of child abuse.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Like Mother, Like Daughter.

Like Mother, Like Daughter

PROLOGUE

As soon as you begin to show, the lies start. They will be well-meaning, all of them. Friends, family, doctors, total strangers—pretty much anyone who spies your pregnant belly will tell you:

Don’t worry, you’ll know what to do when the time comes.

Don’t worry, your maternal instincts will kick right in.

Don’t worry, your body will bounce right back.

Don’t worry, you’re going to be an amazing mother.

Don’t worry, it’s not as hard as it looks.

Don’t worry, being a mother is the most rewarding job in the world.

Don’t worry, you will love them more than you ever thought possible.

The last one is true, if dangerously oversimplified.

It is indeed a ferocious love you feel the second you hold your child, hot and wriggling, against your naked chest. You will die to protect that child. You suspect, uncomfortably, that you could also kill. You have never thought of yourself as this person before—wild, animalistic. It will make you feel both powerful and afraid.

This is your first true introduction to motherhood, this study in contradictions.

And then there is the cost of this boundless love that no one warns you about: the worry and sleepless nights. The fear that they will get sick or grow up sad or be forever lonely. And that it will be your fault. Or that someday they might stop returning your calls. After all, just because you love them without condition does not obligate them to love you back.

Oh, and you will get so much of it wrong. Partly because there is no right answer, to any of it. And on that rare occasion when you do knock it out of the park? That will only make you believe that other mothers must be doing it right all the time. You will commit to trying harder.

You will try until your eyes burn and your arms ache. Until your heart crumbles to dust.

You will do whatever it takes. Even when you don’t know what that is. Especially then. And get ready, because this will be your job forever, this fixing of everything, including the things that cannot be fixed.

For as long as you both shall live.

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Why I love it

People lie. It is as immutable an element of the universe as death and taxes. But things can get interesting when the lies get big, unsettling our sense of people and places. Like Mother, Like Daughter knows this in its bones. This is a twist-and lies-filled thriller with a forceful pulse.

One night NYU student Cleo heads to her childhood home in Brooklyn for dinner with her mother. But when she arrives, her mother is nowhere to be found, and there is a chicken burning in the oven. She quickly surmises that something is amiss and that perhaps her mother, Kat, has been keeping some major secrets from her. Thus begins a hectic search for answers and her mother. It soon turn out that the seemingly perfect and staid Kat was not just a lawyer but actually a fixer. But it is now on her daughter to fix a complicated mess of her making.

Kimberly McCreight, who also wrote A Good Marriage, is a careful student of human mendacity. The way our lies can form perilous Jenga towers with fraught fallout. I could not tear through the pages of this novel fast enough. Each brought with it surprising new revelations and propulsive action. You won’t want to miss out! Read on.

Member ratings (8,368)

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Repeat authors
View all
The Bodyguard
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
House of Glass
Like Mother, Like Daughter
The Lost Story
The Night Swim
The Pairing
Beach Read
Hera
The God of the Woods
One-Star Romance
The Paradise Problem
We Are the Brennans
Daisy Jones & The Six
This Tender Land
The Silent Patient
The Four Winds
You Are Not Alone
One by One
Yours Truly
Invisible Girl
The Rules of Magic
Survive the Night
Troubles in Paradise
Home Before Dark
The Lost Apothecary
Things You Save in a Fire
Real Americans
The Wishing Game
One Day in December
The Great Alone
People We Meet on Vacation
The Reckless Oath We Made
Lock Every Door
The Family Upstairs
Long Bright River
Infinite Country
Part of Your World
Recursion
The Half Moon
A Ladder to the Sky
The Sun Down Motel
The Mothers
The Vanishing Half
Memorial
The Shadows
Immortal Longings
Just for the Summer
The Connellys of County Down
The Knockout Queen
Happy & You Know It
Ask Again, Yes
Practical Magic
Lot
The Woman in Cabin 10
Dark Matter
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Final Girls
Hello Stranger
The Heart’s Invisible Furies
The Wife Between Us
The Broken Girls
In a Holidaze
The Kiss Quotient
The Last Time I Lied
Gods of Jade and Shadow
A Million Junes
The Bride Test
Darling Girls
The Turn of the Key
The Last Word
Dark Corners
Foul Lady Fortune
Evil Eye
The Soulmate