This is my first Lisa Gardner book and to be frank, I was really disappointed. I actually wanted to give it a star and half.I found this while book-browsing at a bookstore nearby. I was impressed seeing so many books by Lisa Gardner so of course it made me more excited to try her book. I mean, if you aren't doing well, you wont have so many titles, would you? I took my time choosing which one I wanted to try first since there was a lot and finally settled with two titles. However, I put one back on the shelf at the last minute.. and am wondering if my subconscious was trying to tell me something.On second thought, maybe I had put my expectations a bit too high..?!First and foremost, the pace is very.. err, confusing. It was all over the place. The characters also didn't seem to develop much which left me quite lost at times. I didn't feel any chemistry between Melanie and David, nor did I feel the so-called 'sexual-tension' between them. In fact, if it were really life, I'd say they'd had parted ways as soon as the case was closed.Dr Stokes Sr did seem as rotten as he turned out to be, but maybe that was because we know early on that he's a bad seed. Dr Stokes Jr, on the other hand was described as troubled but I didn't see any of that throughout the book. So yeah, it was described (told by other people) how disturbed Brian was, but whenever his actual character appeared in the book, there was nothing much to support that.The mother though was the one best described, even if she was a drunkard and all. She sort of shone even more than Melanie who's supposed to be the main character. As for Jamie, the godfather, its nice to find at least one character who'd evoke even a tiny bit of emotion in you (love him because he's charming at first, and hate him for being.. well, him.. in the end)I took so long in reading (while finding excuses to ignore it) this book that I could've finished overnight. And it didn't help that the ending was a bit to sudden that I had to recheck the pages if I had missed some. Though I have to give some credit that I didn't see, until halfway through the book, who the bad guy was.Now I'm thinking of giving Lisa Gardner another chance and try her other books.. or should I just forget about her altogether?!
This book intrigued me at the start. The setup for the mystery was bizarre but compelling: Melanie, 29, was adopted at the age of 9 by a family who had lost their first daughter. A reporter approaches her at the beginning to tell her that her real father was a sadistic serial killer and the man who had murdered her parents' first daughter. After that all the key players start getting notes saying, "You get what you deserve." The reporter is murdered. Melanie is almost murdered. Everyone in the family is harboring secrets and the whole thing is coming apart. It's hard to review mystery novels because a lot hinges on the reveal and I can't tell you about that without spoiling the book. I can't honestly say the ending was predictable, though the outcome was one of several possibilities I seriously considered. The trouble was that even though for a time I was sure I had it figured out (and I did), I ended having to dismiss my guess because the facts weren't adding up. When the ending came and all the details were revealed I felt the same way -- that it didn't quite add up. My biggest problem was the fact that Melanie was adopted as a 9-year-old with no memories. I found that somewhat convenient at first because her memories clearly held the key to the whole puzzle. And though she regains *some* of her memories at the end I still had two big questions: 1.) Why did she lose her memory in the first place?2.) What else wasn't she remembering? The characters were fine. They were diverse and fairly well drawn, although I didn't connect with anyone, not even Melanie or David. There was a minor romantic subplot between Melanie and David (FBI) that struck me as pointless. I'm usually all about romantic subplots but in this case it felt like the tragic result of a modern trend to put romantic subplot in every book regardless of whether or not it needs one. Sometimes a mystery is just a mystery. It's okay. I'm not sure whether to recommend this to mystery fans or not. I'm not as well-read in mystery as other genres so maybe I'm being too hard on it. I'm mostly annoyed that at the end I didn't feel that, "Aha!' moment. I felt an, "Ooooookay" moment. :)
Do You like book The Other Daughter (1999)?
Russell Lee Holmes murdered 6 young children, and the state of Texas is executing him for his crimes. One Of the children Holmes has confessed to murdering is Meagan Stokes, the daughter of a Texas physician and his wife. A reporter covering the story of Holmes' execution knows that Holmes himself has a child, but no one knows the location of this child or the child's mother. When Holmes is executed, that secret dies with him... or so everyone believes. The night Holmes dies, a 9 year old girl shows up in the hospital where Meagan's father works. She has no memory of who she is or where she came from. Eventually Stokes and his wife adopt this girl and name her Melanie Stokes. She fills the gaping void left by the murder of her "sister" Meagan.So begins the story of the Stokes family. Years pass, the family leaves Texas, and the Stokes' household moves on with their lives. And then a series of strange events begin to happen starting with the arrival in town of the reporter who originally covered Russell Lee Holmes and his crimes. The implication is that Melanie Stokes is the child of Russell Lee Holmes. Whether or not that's true, it becomes clear that there's circumstances surrounding Melanie's first 9 years and subsequent adoption that someone wants to reveal. This puts the whole Stokes family in jeopardy of falling apart.There are enough twists and turns in this story to keep the reader guessing right up until the end. I thought some of those events were a bit contrived, but there's no denying that this was a page turner that kept me trying to figure out who was doing what to whom throughout.
—Gabby
A compelling, suspenseful thriller, The Other Daughter is a pretty good read. Every now and then I pick up one of these genre’s of books, and find the pageturning suspense that keeps you guessing until the end, is quite good for a change for me. It revolves around Melanie who was adopted as a young child by a wealthy family who took her in and she became a part of the family. From there - about 25 years forward, a reporter shows up and tells her about everything he discovered from her past. I really enjoyed the characters as we fly through twists and turns until of course we find out the truth by the end. I enjoyed this book…….
—Kathy
I am not one to recap a book play by play and I don't like to give spoilers so instead I will just summarize my feelings. Lisa Gardner is a new author to me. I have found I have read and re read all of my favorites that I needed to branch out and discover a new author. Iris Johansen had some good things to say about Gardner so I decided to check her out. The one word that comes to mind in describing this book is WOW. The plot summary moves along pretty well. I found that I had to pay attention at times because of the twists and turns throughout the book, which there were many. I enjoyed the story development and felt she did a good job giving a brief history to each of the characters for the most part. There were parts I had to really stretch to connect some dots but for a weekend read, it was exactly what I wanted and then some. All in all, it's a pretty fast moving book and the twists were pretty interesting. She takes family dysfunction to another level in this novel. I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to reading the next one.
—Elizabeth Phillips
