Heart-racing thriller that will be your blood boiling and have you glued to the page!

Every now and again you read a book that just screams at you that it needs to be a Netflix series. The Good Daughter is definitely one of those books. I was entirely hooked into this one right off the bat and everything about it was exhilarating, tense beyond measure and hugely visual. I lost myself in the Southern Americana, which positively oozed off the page. Van Rensburg is a beautifully descriptive writer who paints a glorious, expressive canvas with her prose. I felt like I was there at New Haven, melting in the oppressive heat and the even more oppressive beliefs. This book was absolutely fantastic: impressively layered, tauter than a tightrope, emotional on multiple levels, and utterly addictive to read. If you like a thriller that centres around opposing communities and beliefs, this book should be firmly on your radar. It explores cult mentality and the dangers that leaders of these kind of communities can pose. It’s so much more than simply brainwashing people into subservience. The residents of New Haven have practically been stripped of their identity by the New America Baptist Church. In fact, her entire history and memory of it has been virtually erased. The plot is built on a bed of manipulation, which firmly places the reader in Abigail’s corner. It also helped to create a genuinely tense story, which continually built into a huge crescendo of an ending. There’s plenty of twists and explosive reveals, the narrative writhing like a biblical snake from the garden of Eden. I couldn’t predict where this book was going, but where it went blew my mind and left me gasping! It’s absolutely perfectly plotted and packs a punch that Goliath would be envious of.

The think that I enjoyed about this boom the most though, was how timely it felt. As we face the reality of women’s rights being rolled back or even removed in places, The Good Daughter feels like a devastating social commentary. The trauma and extreme views that Abigail faces are not that far away from what real women are suffering around the world. Van Rensburg touches on themes of victimisation and the blaming of women with sensitivity and power. The narrative is explosive in places and touches many nerves. Very rarely does a book make me feel anger and hatred towards a character so viscerally. I genuinely want to punch Pastor John Heyward in the face - he makes my blood boil! This is the power of Van Rensburg’s writing though. It’s immersive, affecting, plausible and powerful. Mixed with a truly unsettling and diabolical narrative, The Good Daughter should be ascending its way to the top of your TBR!

Seventeen-year-old Abigail Heywood is a member of the ultra-orthodox New America Baptist Church. She is proud to be living her life as God intended in the community of Newhaven, South Carolina, away from the sinners of the outside world. But then she meets Summer, a pod-cast host who seems very interested in the way the New America Baptist Church runs its operation out on the old Newhaven Plantation estate. Abigail is convinced that her way of life is pure and worthy, and she is excited to be given the chance to persuade Summer to see the advantages it offers, but events do not go quite as she anticipates.

When a fire rips through her home in Newhaven, killing her parents, Abigail cannot remember the events of the days leading up to the tragedy. As she struggles to make sense of flashes that come back to her, she begins to realise that being a good daughter is not as easy as she thought and life here might not be the haven it pretends to be.

The Good Daughter is Laure Van Rensburg's follow up to her brilliant debut Nobody But Us. Van Rensburg chooses a very different setting and story for her second novel, but it is every bit as compelling at the first, and in some ways it explores many of the same themes.

The story follows two tense timelines which intertwine - one lays out the events of the days that lead up to the fire that kills Abigail's mother and preacher father, and the second follows the fall-out after the apparent tragedy. As the action moves back and forth from past to present, the flow is also broken up by transcripts of incomplete interviews about aspects of the Newhaven community (with host and subjects only identified as male or female), and disturbing letters that pass back and forth between the New America Baptist Church elders about Abigail.

With perfectly pitched pace, tension, and glorious sense of menace Van Rensburg tells the story of the darkness that lies at the heart of the Newhaven community, and how the arrival of Summer on the scene is the catalyst for Abigail to not only question her beliefs, but rebel against the strictures placed on her as a young woman - with violent results. The story twists and turns, keeping you guessing about the true nature of many of the characters, before the parallel timelines collide in a beautifully conceived double climax of breath-taking proportions.

As in Van Rensburg's debut, this is very much a story about control, abuse of power, submission, gaslighting, and dark intent hidden beneath a benign exterior. She delves deep into the concepts of blind faith, strict religious beliefs, and traditional gender roles, channelling the consequences of hatred and injustice into a story that fills you with a real sense of fear. My heart was in my mouth for almost all of this book, as Abigail's fate lays in the balance, and the way Van Rensburg threads more than one mystery to be solved amongst the drama is an absolute masterclass in story telling. There is another side to this tale which explores themes of family, protection, and the lengths people go to to shield those they love too. And if all this was not impressive enough, she also asks some very timely, and discomfiting, questions about the relationship between the rise in extremist churches in the US and the alarming spread of incel culture amongst disaffected males. Thought-provoking and scary stuff indeed.

I absolutely consumed this book. It is one of the best thrillers I have read all year, with real power and complexity in a story that holds you fast from beginning to end. I cannot wait for book three.

2.5 ⭐, luettu suomeksi, mutta ei löytynyt vielä täältä.

A nail-biting, slow-burn thriller about the power of deception and lies. Abigail is a member of the New American Baptist Church and is completely removed from the outside world.

She is also the sole survivor of a fire that burns her family home to the ground.

But is it more than a tragic accident?

Full of twists and turns, this cult-based Southern thriller is perfect for fans of Karin Slaughter and Lisa Jewell. Prepare to get gripped and outraged.

"Daddy hated weak coffee. Or any other weaknesses. A weak nature is how sin gets in."