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A review by thestucumminsreads
The Good Daughter by Laure Van Rensburg
5.0
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!
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!