Like Mother, Like Daughter: A novel

by Kimberly McCreight

Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER! • From the New York Times bestselling author of Reconstructing Amelia: A daughter races to uncover her mother's secret life in the wake of her disappearance • "A breathless, shocking thriller." —Jodi Picoult

The past never stays buried for too long, and what you don't know can definitely hurt you.⁠

“Deeply satisfying”—Angie Kim • “Gripping and bingeable."—Ana Reyes • “As suspenseful as it is thought-provoking."—Greer Hendricks

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 . . . 

Like Mother, Like Daughter is a thrilling novel of emotional suspense that questions the damaging fictions we cling to and the hard truths we avoid. Above all, it’s a love story between a mother and a daughter, each determined to save the other before it’s too late.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593536438
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/30/2024
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	2,356
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

KIMBERLY McCREIGHT is the New York Times best-selling author of Reconstructing Amelia, Where They Found Her, A Good Marriage, and Friends Like These, as well as a young adult trilogy, The Outliers. She's been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Alex awards, and her books have been translated into more than twenty languages. She lives in Brooklyn.

Editorial Reviews

05/13/2024

Bestseller McCreight (Friends Like This) explores thorny parent-child bonds in her captivating latest. After much badgering, rebellious NYU undergrad Cleo McHugh agrees to have dinner with her estranged mother, Kat, at her parents’ house in Brooklyn. When she arrives late to find dinner burning and Kat MIA, she panics, then notices a blood-smeared shoe under the couch. Cleo frantically calls her father, Aidan, who’s away on business, and then the police, who warn her against investigating Kat’s disappearance on her own. From there, the narrative splits into parallel tracks following Kat and Cleo, and McCreight serves up shrewdly timed bits of backstory: Kat and Aidan have recently started divorce proceedings; Kat has been working as a fixer for her law firm; Cleo and her drug-dealing ex-boyfriend have just rekindled their flame. Clever red herrings add to the suspense, and McCreight weaves in moving insights about intergenerational trauma as she orchestrates the plot to its satisfying conclusion. The results are sturdy enough to withstand a few too-soapy twists. This should please McCreight’s existing fans and win her new ones. Agent: Dorian Karchmar, WME. (July)

Publishers Weekly

A CBS New York Book Club Pick

“Gripping and bingeable, Like Mother, Like Daughter revolves around a realistically complex relationship between a mother and her estranged daughter. I rooted for Cleo and Kat as they raced to save each other from menacing exes, a tragic past, and a dangerous present. I had plenty of theories reading it yet the ending caught me totally off guard!”
—Ana Reyes, New York Times best-selling author of The House in the Pines

“The love between a mother and a child is ostensibly fierce—but how far would you actually go to protect your daughter? McCreight’s latest explores motherhood in all its complexities—wrapped up in a breathless, shocking thriller I could not put down.”
—Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times best-selling author

“A deeply satisfying nail-biter that is, at its heart, a beautiful love story of a mother and a daughter who must dig through each other’s secrets to find true connection and save each other. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Angie Kim, international best-selling author of Miracle Creek and Happiness Falls

“Both hauntingly suspenseful and deeply moving, Like Mother, Like Daughter explores the complex relationships within a family, and the bonds that endure, above all. A tense and twisting tale that will leave you wondering which is more dangerous: the lies, or the truth?" 
—Megan Miranda, New York Times best-selling author of The Only Survivors

"I am a huge fan of Kimberly McCreight’s books and she has done it again. A gripping thriller that explores the challenging complexities of the mother-daughter relationship and the immense pressure that society puts on mothers to do and be all things, Like Mother, Like Daughter is as suspenseful as it is thought-provoking. I couldn’t put it down."
—Greer Hendricks, best-selling co-author of The Wife Between Us

"Once again, Kimberly McCreight has assembled a dizzyingly delicious page turner. But Like Mother, Like Daughter isn’t just a twisty mystery; it’s also an exploration of the family dynamics that we can’t quite quit, no matter how hard we might try. Perfect for the beach or the book club!”
—Janelle Brown, New York Times best-selling author of I’ll Be You and Pretty Things

“Like Mother, Like Daughter is a stunning thriller, perfectly capturing the naked vulnerability and open wounds that result from being someone's mother and someone's daughter. Within the hairpin twists and turns of McCreight's writing is a cathartic story of maternal love where mothers are never martyrs, they're fighters.”
—Chandler Baker, New York Times best-selling author of Whisper Network

"In Like Mother, Like Daughter, the sacred yet fraught bond between Katrina and Cleo is tested as they are challenged by interlopers, the pain of the past and the revelation of long-buried secrets. Kimberly McCreight takes the reader on a roller coaster of thrilling twists and wild turns. Brava!"
—Adriana Trigiani, New York Times best-selling author of The Good Left Undone


“Captivating. . . . Clever red herrings add to the suspense, and McCreight weaves in moving insights about intergenerational trauma as she orchestrates the plot to its satisfying conclusion. . . . This should please McCreight’s existing fans and win her new ones."
—Publishers Weekly

“McCreight expertly shifts time frames and points of view between mother and daughter and brings in a cast of vivid supporting characters. . . . [A] keenly plotted and magnetizing tale of strong women seeking truth and justice and the demands and joys of mother-daughter relationships.”
—Booklist

“Intense, thought-provoking and completely unputdownable.”
—BookPage

“Taut. . . . McCreight pulls you in with a seemingly messed up daughter called upon to track down her missing, seemingly perfect daughter. Naturally, nothing is as it seems ...”
—Parade, "One of the Best New Book Releases This Week"

“For fans of: The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave. . . . Like Mother, Like Daughter ratchets up the tension ... unraveling the mystery while keeping readers guessing.”
—Reader’s Digest

"Bestselling McCreight expertly orchestrates mother-daughter dynamics to build additional layers of tension onto a fast-paced and twisted plotline." 
—Library Journal

“McCreight expertly layers this story with plot twist after plot twist. Like Mother, Like Daughter goes beyond your standard domestic thriller, peeling back the layers of the complex relationship that exists between a mother and her child. McCreight dares readers not to get emotionally invested in these characters straight through to the startling conclusion.”
—Bookreporter.com

From the Publisher

06/01/2024

Having survived a traumatic childhood in a group home, successful attorney Kat McHugh's carefully constructed life is now starting to break apart. She is recently separated from her filmmaker husband and fending off his requests to use her inheritance to fund his next project, while her college-age daughter Cleo is growing more emotionally distant from her, especially after Kat learns that Cleo is dating the campus drug dealer. When Kat starts receiving anonymous threats, she uses her talents and connections from her legal career to try to unmask the person who is intimidating her and her daughter. One day, an irritated Cleo arrives home at her mother's insistence and discovers food burning in the kitchen—and no trace of her mother. Not satisfied with the pace of the police investigation into the disappearance, Cleo starts to dig into her mother's professional life and childhood, and her alarming discoveries put her directly in the crosshairs. VERDICT Bestselling McCreight (Friends Like These) expertly orchestrates mother-daughter dynamics to build additional layers of tension onto a fast-paced and twisted plotline. Pair with Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter.—Joy Gunn

Library Journal

2024-05-17
A mother and daughter find new appreciation and understanding for each other when their lives are threatened.

When New York University student Cleo shows up at her mother Katrina’s Park Slope house for dinner, she finds signs of a struggle—and her mother’s shoe covered in blood. Mother and daughter had been estranged since Katrina interfered in Cleo’s relationship with a white-collar drug dealer, but Cleo instantly snaps into action, determined to find her mother. Aided by a sympathetic cop and hindered by her lackadaisical father (who’s separated from her mother), Cleo investigates her mom’s computer as well as her place of business. Katrina had always led Cleo to believe she was a patent attorney, but it turns out she was a fixer for wealthy and powerful people. She was also, in her youth, an abandoned child who lived at Haven House until she was adopted at the age of 14. Cleo finds her mother’s journal from those years and feels appalled—and guilty—to read about the abuse her mother endured. As Cleo is drawn deeper and deeper into the details of her mother’s life and disappearance, she herself may be in danger. McCreight alternates first-person chapters about Cleo’s search with chapters in Katrina’s voice about the days leading up to her disappearance, and also includes the occasional transcript of a therapy session, journal entry, or legal document connected to one of Katrina’s big cases. The build-up is extremely well paced and effective, created brick by suspenseful brick. No one, of course, is who they seem. Eventually the two main narratives converge in a somewhat flat climax—but most of the loose threads are satisfactorily tied up. Both Katrina and Cleo are tough as nails and vulnerable as hell, which makes it easy to root for them both against all the forces of (mostly masculine) evil they have to combat.

A smart, complex domestic thriller.

Kirkus Reviews