Like Mother, Like Daughter
(Libby/OverDrive eAudiobook)

NYU student Cleo is sick of her exacting mother's criticism, especially after their battles over Cleo's drug-dealer ex-boyfriend. Cleo prefers her laid-back documentary filmmaker dad. But she agrees to come for dinner at their Brooklyn brownstone because Kat, a patent lawyer, seems uncharacteristically anxious. Cleo walks into a crime scene. Her mother is gone. As McCreight (Friends Like These, 2021) expertly shifts time frames and points of view between mother and daughter and brings in a cast of vivid supporting characters, Kat comes into focus as the hardened survivor of a violent childhood and a ferocious fixer for her law firm. Now her past erupts just as things go rogue with a case involving a pharmaceutical company selling a drug that harms pregnant people and their unborn children. Cleo unknowingly emulates her fierce, smart mother as she boldly investigates Kat's disappearance only to discover that her entire world is a tangle of lies and betrayals. Like mother, like daughter plays like a mantra throughout McCreight's keenly plotted and magnetizing tale of strong women seeking truth and justice and the demands and joys of mother-daughter relationships.

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)

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

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. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

NYU student Cleo is sick of her exacting mother's criticism, especially after their battles over Cleo's drug-dealer ex-boyfriend. Cleo prefers her laid-back documentary filmmaker dad. But she agrees to come for dinner at their Brooklyn brownstone because Kat, a patent lawyer, seems uncharacteristically anxious. Cleo walks into a crime scene. Her mother is gone. As McCreight (Friends Like These, 2021) expertly shifts time frames and points of view between mother and daughter and brings in a cast of vivid supporting characters, Kat comes into focus as the hardened survivor of a violent childhood and a ferocious fixer for her law firm. Now her past erupts just as things go rogue with a case involving a pharmaceutical company selling a drug that harms pregnant people and their unborn children. Cleo unknowingly emulates her fierce, smart mother as she boldly investigates Kat's disappearance only to discover that her entire world is a tangle of lies and betrayals. Like mother, like daughter plays like a mantra throughout McCreight's keenly plotted and magnetizing tale of strong women seeking truth and justice and the demands and joys of mother-daughter relationships. Copyright 2024 Booklist Reviews.

The Edgar- and Anthony-nominated McCreight (Reconstructing Amelia) spins out a mother-daughter suspense thriller. Cleo, somewhat estranged from her seemingly on-top-of-it-all mom Kat, comes to dinner to find burning food in the oven and one bloody shoe. It turns out that Kat's facade is paper thin. She knows, far better than Cleo, that danger is engulfing their world. Prepub Alert. Copyright 2023 Library Journal

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

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)