Publishers Weekly
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)
From the Publisher
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
Library Journal
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
