Daly Explores Every Mother’s Worst Nightmare

If you’re a fan of page-turning thrillers, Just What Kind of Mother Are You? by Paula Daly is an engrossing story that plays upon every mother’s worst nightmare.

Lisa Kallisto juggles working at an animal shelter with raising three kids and trying to give her taxi driver husband the attention she feels he deserves. During one especially busy week, Lisa forgets to call her friend Kate to cancel a sleepover their two girls have planned. Kate’s daughter Lucinda goes missing that same day and Lisa finds herself wracked with guilt over the mistake.

To make matters worse, everyone around Lisa seems to agree that she’s the one at fault. If she had been a “better” mother, she would have called Kate and let her know that her daughter wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

Lucinda is the second teenage girl to go missing from the area in two weeks. A third girl ends up missing soon after Kate realizes Lucinda has vanished, which adds a frantic sense of urgency to the search. At some point, almost everyone Lucinda knows is a suspect.

The story alternates between the point of view of Lisa and Detective Joanne Aspinall with a few pages of cryptic input from the man assumed to be responsible. Lisa seems just like every stressed out working mom I’ve met. Detective Aspinall is a relatively likable character, although I found myself wondering what the constant references to her need for a breast reduction surgery had to do with the plot of the story.

Overall, Just What Kind of Mother Are You? is an exceptional debut novel. Even though the book is set in Britain and some of the character’s regional dialect tripped me up a bit, I became quickly engrossed in the story. I kept trying to guess what would happen next, but every theory I had about Lucinda’s disappearance ended up wrong.

Disclaimer: A review copy was provided by the publisher.

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