This book is hard for me to review. I love D.J. Palmer's books and writing, but for some reason, I did not connect with the characters in this book which is so weird. Please don't take my experience as a negative because this was a good story. I think the challenge of D.I.D was handled well and the twists were good and the characters are well written.

I read D.J. Palmer's new book, The New Husband, last year and I loved it. When I saw that Palmer had a new book coming out, I was immediately excited to read it. As a mom of not one but two girls, I really enjoy books that center around mothers' relationships with their daughters. I also like to learn about human behavior and mental illness, so I knew that I was going to enjoy this book. I am happy to say that this one didn't disappoint. There is definitely something about it that made it hard to put down. I felt like I wanted to keep reading it to find out what was going to happen next. My only complaint about the book was that I felt like it was a little longer than necessary. This may be a matter of my own personal preference. I like books to be around 250-300 pages, and this one came in around 384. I will be posting my review on my instagram page @readingmama_reviews. Thank you to St. Martin's for giving me a chance to read a copy through Netgalley, as well as for the awesome swag package that I received!

D. J. Palmer has done his research. Lee Child said, in an author's talk with D. J. "I absolutely love a book where you learn something along the way". And learn we do.

In The Perfect Daughter, D.J. has skillfully captured the "voice" of a mama bear, intent on saving her daughter, even at a cost to her livelihood. Penny's diagnosis of DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) means that she isn't even aware of where she is when she wakes up in a mental institution. As the psychiatrist struggles to figure out if her diagnosis is real, if she's faking, or if she is truly a psychopath, mom Grace tracks down clues that could help her lawyer present all the facts of the case.

The character development was great and there was a whoa! twist at the end.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's copy for an advanced reader's copy.

This book was just okay. I liked the idea of split personalities, but I think I was able to guess some of the storyline thanks to a well loved movie from my past.... (Primal Fear).

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐝:⁣⁣
◘ I haven’t read many books about multiple personality disorder, or DID, as clarified in this book. So that was a nice change. ⁣
⁣
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐝:⁣⁣
◘ This was the slowest burn of all time. Not sure if it felt so slow because this took me so long to read, but I kept waiting for something big to happen. ⁣
◘ How are you going to have a book about a woman with multiple personalities and not title it: The Perfect DaughterS (I mean hullo?)⁣
◘ I was able to “guess” a tiny plot twist thanks to a well known old movie I love.⁣

This is one of those books that I don’t think had a fair shot, which is why I’m keeping the bad bullet points short and not so harsh. I had to pick it up and put it down so many times due to a busy week. This took me 7 days to finish, which is impossibly long considering I usually finish a book in a day or two. Would I have enjoyed it more if I was able to devote a solid day to it? Probably.⁣
⁣

As I read the first few pages of this book, I was hooked. I live on the South Shore of Massachusetts and am very familiar with the cities and towns mentioned. In fact, I live in the thinly-veiled-not-really-fictional town of Edgewater (if you take a minute to research you'll see the real name is only a few letters off) which holds the mental hospital/prison that is the setting for the majority of the novel. Learning that the story took place so close to home was an immediate draw.

The beginning third of the story was great - exciting, engaging and thought-provoking. All the things you look for in this genre. Penny is a teenager girl accused of a horrible, violent murder. Caught at the scene, she is the police's only suspect. It doesn't help that she has a history of disturbing behaviors and a DID diagnosis (what was formerly knows as Multiple Personality Disorder). The novel is told by a rotation of narrators: Penny's mom, Grace; her psychiatrist, Mitch; and her filmmaker brother, Jack. All three are trying to figure out if Penny's diagnosis is real, or if she is the world's greatest con-artist.

The set-up is spot on, and I loved it...for the first half of the book, but then it just seems very circuitous. The three characters kept repeating the same plot points, and the story didn't move forward. I kept waiting for a big revelation, but it really didn't come. Disappointing since, with a book of this genre, you expect things to either move quickly or burn hot, and this did neither. Then the "big reveal" came within the last 10% of the book, and so quickly it didn't quite make sense in the context of the rest of the novel. Honestly you'd think it was chopped off another novel and glued on to this one. It was so bizarre.

Unsure if I'd recommend to another person. I'd probably do so with a caveat, caution and a shoulder shrug. Eh.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and St. Martin's Press for giving me a chance to read and review this novel.

This book receives a 3.75 star rating from me.

This story revolves around a mother and her family, including her adopted daughter, Penny who has DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder). Penny is found at a murder scene of a woman who turns out to be her biological mother but has no recollection of the crime. All the evidence points to her, but did she do it? Was it an alter who committed the crime or is she completely innocent?

I enjoyed reading this book. It was very interesting learning all of that information about DID and traits of someone who has DID. There were also several twists and turns that I did not see coming in this book, including an explosive ending! I also love when a book has an unreliable character, in this book -- Penny. Did she actually suffer from DID? Or did she make it up and was just playing a game the entire time? It was really a mystery throughout the story and I kept going back and forth on what I believed.

The chapters change between different characters perspectives and at times was a bit hard to follow. It would take me a paragraph or two to figure out which character’s perspective the chapters were switching to. It may have been slightly easier to follow if the chapters were labeled with which character's name so you know which storyline you are reading at the time.

Overall, this was an enjoyable read with twists and turns with an explosive ending that you will not see coming.

Thank you so much NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Before I started this book, I had seen multiple reviews about how it wasn't any good. So I was hesitant. But boy, there's a reason I don't always read reviews. I thought this book was great! Penny is a teenager, who is found one day with blood all over her body, murder weapon in hand. The thing is, she cannot remember anything about where she was or what she was doing there. Penny's mom goes on a search to find out what really happened because she knows deep down that her daughter is innocent.

This book was really interesting to me, especially with my background in psychology. Grace swears up and down that Penny has Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID - previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder) ever since she was found in a park at 4 years old, but that's such a hard disability to diagnose, so others have a hard time believing her. Grace believes that Penny is fully innocent, but even if there was a chance that she committed this murder, it was one of her alters, not her. This book has the right amount of family drama thrown in with some legal themes, as well as the overarching theme of mental health awareness and trauma.

"The Silent Patient" of 2021

Unfortunately, I saw an unmarked spoiler in an advance review—the reader just put it out there! So, it took away the element of surprise at the destination. But I still enjoyed the journey, barring the detours. As should fans of Alex Michaelides‘ debut novel.

Sixteen-year-old Penny is arrested for the murder of her birth mother and remanded to a state hospital to undergo psychiatric evaluation before trial, since she previously had been diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder.

DID she or didn’t she commit the crime? Penny’s birth mother had been on her hit list (for which she has a prior arrest record), and Penny was found covered in blood and holding the murder weapon at the scene.

With the help of the rule-bending hospital psychiatrist (who’s like the proverbial shoemaker whose son always goes barefoot) and the hiring of a shrewd criminal defense attorney, Penny’s now-widowed adoptive mother, (a saving) Grace, and Aunt Annie (Oakley-esque) seek to find evidence of her innocence (farcically, when confronting “bad hombre”; they’re no Finlay & Vero), while Grace’s elder and bitter son runs the floundering family pizza restaurant, and the perspicacious other son journals, as part of his college film course, about the case.

There’s lot to follow (and the timeline in the uncorrected digital galley, I couldn’t: Penny is sixteen one minute, seventeen the next; and the psych evaluation that’s supposed to be six weeks extends to over a year, hence the sense of urgency that we’re told about I never felt).

Careful readers should really delight, though, in playing armchair detective along with the shrink and lawyer (the “real” detective in the story gets apprised by Grace).

With no shortage of red herrings, this third psychological thriller by Daniel Palmer writing as D.J. Palmer would be excellent if it were pared down—if it just were to examine mental illness, instead of also trying to tackle opioid addiction—and weren’t to go soft at the end (the tacked-on epilogue, unnecessary).

TW: animal abuse

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Thank you to St Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the advance readers copy.

I hope that in the published edition, it will read in chapter 40: “bury the lede.”

Fans of suspense/mysteries will not be disappointed with this one, especially if you are like me and like to 'solve' the mystery and see if you are correct. Sure, you can assume things along the way, but are your assumptions right? Did you figure it out before the characters in the story did? Kudos to D J Palmer for keeping my interest and writing this hard to put down suspense/mystery!

This one took a bit of time to get into, but with about 100 pages to go, I was hooked and needed to know how it ended.

Penny was adopted when she was 4-years-old after Grace finds her abandoned in a playground. Now, twelve years later, she is found, clutching a knife and kneeling over her birth mother’s body, covered in her blood. She says she doesn’t remember anything, and is locked in a psychiatric hospital awaiting trial. Penny’s only hope of not spending the rest of her life in prison is to convince her new doctor that she has dissociative identity disorder and one of her alters is responsible.

There was a lot of time spent on explaining dissociative identity disorder (aka multiple personality disorder,) which slowed down the entire beginning (and some of the middle) of the book. I can’t speak to whether or not the description is accurate, but it’s always a little iffy when an author uses a psychological disorder as the premise of a murder mystery.

But, outside of that, I thought that Grace’s character was interesting. I don’t know if I can completely relate to her -- especially as it seems like she pushed her older two children away in favor of Penny -- because she was a girl and they weren’t, but I can understand wanting to do everything possible to save your child.

My biggest complaint about this book was the alternating chapters written by Penny’s brother’s perspective as someone making a film about the story. It was a different way to incorporate a narrator, but I thought it was unnecessary and slowed down the story.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press in exchange for my honest review. It has not influenced my opinion.

This book had an interesting concept. Grace’s daughter, Penny, is in a psychiatric hospital awaiting trial for murder. She has no recollection of killing anyone but the problem is she has multiple personalities and doesn’t remember what her other “alters” did. The pieces come together in this mystery as her mom, brothers, aunt, doctors, and lawyers try to get in touch with all her personalities and see who, if any, of them killed her birth mother.

This started really strong and the ending was exciting. I struggled through the middle which felt repetitive and long. I could tell the author did research on this disorder and I still thought it was a decent thriller but I wouldn’t call it fast-paced. I have enjoyed this author in past and will continue to pick up new books.

Thanks to NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for the copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. “The Perfect Daughter” is available now.

“Giving birth is a single act, but parenting was the culmination of thousands of acts, large and small, done selflessly each day. It was the sum total of those experiences that had cemented an indelible bond, one that blurred the lines between parenting a biological child and an adopted one.”

Grace dreams of mothering a daughter, so when a little girl is found alone in the park Grace knows she is meant to be hers. But Penny has some issues. She suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID. Then a woman is found murdered and Penny is at the scene, covered in the dead woman’s blood, holding the murder weapon. Can Grace, with the help of Dr Mitch McHugh, a man who himself suffers from mental illness, get to the bottom of what really happened? Will the multiple personalities that inhabit Penny’s mind tell the true story, or will they battle to keep the truth hidden?

This was a little slow for me for a thriller. It is told from multiple POV’s, and I feel that the brothers perspective could have easily been removed and nothing would have been lost in the story. It was so slow going that I found myself, at times, almost wanting to skip portions just to get to the conclusion. I prefer a more fast paced thriller, but overall this was a very entertaining read.

Thank you to Netgalley, St. Martin’s Press and the author for these complimentary copies in exchange for an honest review.

“When we arrested her, she was covered in blood—it was all over her body, in her hair—so when you come to the station, you should bring a change of clothes.…there are no visible wounds on Penny. But the victim was found deceased at the scene, and we believe it’s the victim’s blood on your daughter’s body.”
Grace got the impression the detective was holding something back.
“She’s calling herself Eve, but that’s not the name on her license.”
Again, a chill ran through Grace. Eve.
“She said she doesn’t remember anything that happened before we showed up. We think maybe she’s in shock, but we’re not sure,” Allio went on. “Is Eve a nickname?”
Grace paused, deciding how to answer. “It’s more complicated than that,” she offered.

It certainly is.

A bucket of ammonia, boats and water, a book with a blue cover. What do they all mean? The clues keep popping up, from different voices throughout the novel. Of course, the voices, however diverse they may be, all reside inside one body. Penny Francone is afflicted (or is it protected?) by a mental health condition now known as DID, or Dissociative Identity Disorder, what we used to call Multiple Personality Disorder. People with this are seen today as a single, splintered personality, rather than separate entire personalities vying for literal face time.

We are presented straight away with a particularly tough scenario. It was sixteen-year-old Penny’s birth mother, Rachel, a woman with a checkered past, who was brutally murdered. Penny had been found, unaccompanied, in a city park when she was four years old. Birth mother and daughter had recently reestablished contact, and Penny had gone to b-mom’s place to meet. Penny was found next to the body, covered in blood, holding the murder weapon. Did Penny kill her mother? Looks pretty open and shut. But perhaps it was one of her alters, Eve, maybe, or Ruby, or Chloe, or even some other, as yet undiscovered, alter. But the question remains. Is Penny a supremely gifted liar, fooling everyone, and truly guilty of slaughtering the woman who had cruelly abandoned her, or is there something else going on?

Grace Francone is terrified for her child. DID is not a fully recognized condition, and there is a strong likelihood that her teenager will spend the rest of her life in prison, for a crime she apparently cannot recall committing. She is currently being held in a less than cushy state institution, largely a grim custodial service for the criminally insane. Penny’s eighteen-year-old brother, Jack, serving the needs of exposition, is planning to make a documentary about his sister. We get his intermittent second-person commentary, as if he is telling Penny about his plans.

"Your shrink at Edgewater was a guy named Dr. Dennis Palumbo, who we all despised. Well, maybe all but Ryan, because Palumbo thought the same thing he did: that you didn’t have DID. According to Palumbo, DID wasn’t even a real condition, and didn’t belong in the DSM…It’s thought that DID is just a variant of a borderline personality disorder, or in your case an antisocial personality disorder, and that the appearance of your alters is akin to fantasy play rather than a verifiable neurological state. In short, Palumbo thought you were an expert liar."

Thankfully, Palumbo (The name of this character, BTW, was sold at auction to raise money for The Evelyn Swierczynski Foundation. There is a real-world writer/psychologist named Dr. Dennis Palumbo out there.) is replaced with a different shrink, someone with a more open mind, Dr. Mitchell Hughes, a guy with issues of his own, (does there exist a shrink with none?) but an eagerness to learn the truth about his patient.

In order for Penny to avoid becoming a permanent resident of a penal institution, she will need support for her not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity plea with an official DID diagnosis. Doc Mitch is skeptical, but willing to look at the facts. He and Grace form a team trying to ferret out the truth, and give Penny at least a fighting chance. Most mysteries entail sleuthing in the concrete world, and there is plenty of that here, for sure, but this Doctor Holmes and Ms. Watson must do a lot of their work inside the world of Penny’s personalities. It is far from elementary.

This was a bit of a change for DJ Palmer.

"This was the hardest book I’ve ever attempted. There were so many moving parts and for my first ever mystery (mostly I do crawl out from a hole thrillers, not murder mysteries with clues peppered throughout)." - from the Judith D. Collins interview

And nicely done too. It is the author’s third novel under this name. Saving Meghan came out in 2019 and The New Husband was published in 2020. But DJ Palmer is an alter, of a sort, for Daniel Palmer. He is the son of physician and noted author of medical thrillers, Michael Palmer. Daniel even wrote some books that were published under Michael’s name (“with Daniel Palmer”) after his father died. His books as Daniel tended toward the technological thriller sort, building on his years working in the tech industry, while those written as DJ tend more towards the familial and medical. Saving Meghan, for example, is about Munchausen’s by Proxy.

"When I switched from writing as Daniel Palmer to writing as DJ Palmer, my themes changed along with my name. The DJ books delve more into family drama and psychological suspense." - from The Nerd Daily interview

As such, DJ can step back from the ready-set-flee that permeates so many thrillers and look at the family dynamics at play. Loyalty, for example, comes in for some attention. Grace is fiercely loyal to and protective of Penny, and her brother, Jack, is on her side as well, but big brother Ryan is more hostile than helpful. A question is raised as to where Penny’s loyalties lie regarding her birth mother.

The story is presented through several non-DID points of view. We see most through Grace, as she girds for battle, and enters the fray. Jack offers some exposition in his once-removed take, as he addresses Penny, as if writing letters to her. Finally, there is Doctor Mitch, who offers us medical expertise, and the step-by-step of exploring a very strange terrain.

Palmer offers not just a medical take on DID, but shows how it impacts in personal, family, legal, and medical ways, and how easily it can be misdiagnosed. He does a great job of showing how DID affects not only how her family relates to Penny, but how the world does. There are serious legal implications for her if the people in a position to decide her future deny the existence of the DID diagnosis entirely. In that case, it is off to jail forever. Life over. In addition, Grace having to take on the out-of-pocket legal costs and spend her time working on the case instead of at the family business (a pizzeria based on Palmer’s experience with owning a small restaurant) has serious implications for the family’s financial welfare, and stress level. It certainly turns on its head the supposed legal presupposition of innocent until proven guilty and shows how families of the accused are punished along with those charged with a crime. A dismissive diagnosis can destroy a life, but also cause collateral damage to all those connected to it. One of Palmer’s aims in the book was to dispel myths about the DID condition. He certainly changed my perception.

The action continues apace, as clues are found, investigated and incorporated or dismissed. This is a very readable, engaging thriller-mystery. But every now and then there are passages that made me break out into smiles.

"On that bleak afternoon, Lucky Dog looked anything but. The dark interior had the ambience of a power outage… Four of the nine stools at the dark varnished wood bar were occupied by beefy men, who put the dive in dive bar… Behind the bar stood stacks of bottles that looked sticky even from a distance. The air reeked of booze and cleaners, overlaid by a whiff of desperation."

Just gotta love that.

DJ Palmer has integrated multiple elements, of medical mystery, suspense, family drama, and high-tension-watch-your-back thriller, into an engaging, white-knuckle read. Polly-Eve-Chloe-Ruby Francone may not be the ideal progeny, but The Perfect Daughter is a perfectly fabulous read. Set aside as many hours as it takes. You owe it to your self.

“Dr. Cross, who gave us the DID diagnosis, said that we all start out with multiple personalities when we’re young. Is that something you believe?”
“I do,” said McHugh, nodding. “It’s like learning about life through committee. Those disparate voices in our young minds help us figure out the world and how different environments and stimuli affect us. Do we like things sweet or sour; what’s funny to us; what scares us? By age nine, our experiences tend to mold us into the person we become, and all those likes and dislikes, our moods and disposition, solidify into a single identity—this concept of self.”


Review posted – April 30, 2021

Publication date – April 20, 2021

For the complete review, including links to interviews and other material, please see the version posted on GoodReads - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3753319997

When you think it’s an open and shut case....think again! Penny suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder so maybe it’s not so straight forward after all. Firstly I think it’s important to give the author a huge amount of credit for the research that so clearly went into this disorder and into writing this book in general. Secondly, it is a fantastic and addictive read! Would definitely recommend!

I was so excited to review this, especially after reading The New Husband. DJ Palmer did it again! Completely sucked in with the twisty story.

The Perfect Daughter is a complex and suspenseful story that follows Penny, a teenage girl with a possible Dissociative Identity Disorder diagnosis who has a loving adoptive family along with her adoptive mother, Grace, a struggling widow. When Penny is found at the scene of a murder with blood all over her and a pretty compelling motive, most presume an open/shut case. With an impending murder trial and overwhelming evidence against Penny, things aren’t looking good. With the help of Dr. Mitch McHugh, a new psychiatrist at the state psychiatric hospital Penny’s remanded to, a new personality emerges and may hold the key to just what happened the day of the murder.

Traversing the narrative of Grace, Penny (and her alters), Dr. Mitch and Jack – Penny’s adoptive brother– there’s a great round robin view of both past and present events. Penny is a fairly unreliable narrator but not in the usual sense – is she lying? Does she remember the event? Maybe, maybe not? It’s hard to tell because Mr. Palmer did such a stellar job with Penny and her alters character development. This kept me listening all day and ignoring pretty much everything and everyone around me. I found this story to be suspenseful and twisty but also, just all-around fascinating.

Narration: Narrators January Lavoy and Dan Bittner are phenomenal! Both complemented the characters beautifully. Their voices leading me through the chapters smoothly with perfect inflection and flow; generating the perfect atmosphere for this tense thriller.

Big thank you to @Macmillan.Audio for the #gifted ALC and to @StMartinsPress for the #gifted DRC

I'm definitely in the minority here and did not love this one. So if the synopsis sounds good, and you love this author, go get this one.

For me, I just couldn't get in to the story. I didn't like the characters or feel any interest in them and I really struggled with buying off and suspending my disbelief long enough to believe in it all. I found the writing style maybe not to my liking - I didn't like the POV mid paragraph changes. Because of the shifts, the writing always re-states the POV person's name over and over. I think I would have loved this as an audio book but on my kindle, I just struggled. I wish I'd loved it!

<i>A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.</i>

Fantastic psychological thriller that had me staying up past my bedtime.
Highly recommend this one !!

I received a copy of this from NetGalley and the author in exchange for fair and honest review.

Thanks NG for an copy.
I love D. J. Palmer . The Perfect Daughter is a great read , twisted psychological thriller. Even better than Saving Meghan.

Penny Francone had been sent to a psychiatric hospital, with a tentative diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder, and was accused of killing her birth mother, Rachel, in a horrifically bloody scene. Abandoned in a local playground at the age of four, Penny – then Isabella – was clearly suffering some kind of trauma when Grace and her young son Jack found her. Grace had always wanted a daughter, but had given up hope after two boys, and believed Penny was the answer to her prayers. Though Grace’s husband Arthur, owner and manager of a successful pizza parlor, was hesitant, grace forged ahead and managed to secure their home as Penny’s foster home, leading to her adoption shortly afterwards.

When Penny was about nine, the family noticed some strangeness about her mannerisms, as she spoke in a British accent and called herself Ruby off and on. Chalking it up to a fascination with all things Harry Potter, the family ignored the early signs. Soon, another personality emerged, one driven to succeed in school and hyper focused on perfection in all things, who went by Chloe. And finally, a darker, more sinister personality was present, a rage-filled hostile teenager who called herself Eve. After Arthur’s untimely death, Grace and her sons took over the managing operations of the pizza parlor, but all the while Grace was immersed in finding suitable psychiatric help for Penny. After Rachel’s murder, Grace became obsessed with finding a suitable attorney and having Penny declared not guilty.

Told in alternating viewpoints, The Perfect Daughter is an interesting read. The concept of Dissociative Identity Disorder is fascinating and the descriptions of Penny, Ruby, Chloe, and Eve make it easy to tell which identity is present. I appreciated the caring and concern of the psychiatrist, who was fighting his own demons, and the dedicated work Dr. McHugh did with Penny to help her cope with her incarceration in the psychiatric hospital. Trigger warning – I could have done without the graphic descriptions of the cat’s torture. Other than that, I enjoyed the story.