Get ready for another mesmerizing psychological thriller from DJ Palmer! I found this story engrossing from start to finish.

Penny Falcone was found abandoned in a park when she was only about 4 years old. Crying and getting soaked from the rain, she is discovered and eventually adopted by Grace Falcone and her family.

Once Penny is sixteen, she ends up being arrested for murder. Penny had already been under the care of psychiatrists prior to this time, and had been diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. Because of this, it was going to be extremely difficult to find her innocent, especially with the evidence the prosecutor has been presented with.

Grace is determined that Penny is innocent and works tirelessly to prove her case. Penny’s new psychiatrist, Dr. Mitch helps Grace uncover the truth about Penny’s personalities and her hidden past. Penny’s brother Jack also helps by investigating the murder victim on his own.

By the time the trial begins, the stage is set for some explosive testimony. A dramatic courtroom scene ensues, bringing the story to a riveting climax.

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for allowing me to read an advance copy. I am happy to offer an honest review.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book by DJ Palmer. If you like medical/psychological based thriller/mystery stories, then this is for you.
The story centers around a murder and a teenage girl who is found at the scene, holding the weapon and covered in the victim’s blood. Seems open and shut to the local police, especially since the girl is unable to defend herself with an explanation of the events.
The teen is a girl who has been diagnosed with possible DID, dissociative identity disorder or multiple personality disorder. She is now 16 but was found by her adoptive mother and brother at the age of four, after being abandoned by her own mother. Her adoptive name becomes Penny, given to her by her brother. She has had some difficult events in her life, some known throughout the story and others that come to light as we read. After the murder and arrest, Penny is sent to the state mental hospital for evaluation and treatment. Initially she is under a psychiatrist’s care and he doesn’t believe her diagnosis. She is then turned over to a newly hired psychiatrist who is very thorough and experimental in his evaluation. He is skeptical of the various labels that have been given to Penny and is willing to try different avenues to ensure the correct diagnosis. Penny is also represented by her defense attorney. She has a team of people who are trying to get the best verdict for her and they work as a team but are under a time constraint due to the upcoming trial. Will the new psychiatrist have enough time to come to a diagnosis he believes is accurate? Will he be able to testify in the trial? Will Penny testify?
As we read, we slowly see Penny’s “alters” tell a new or different perspective of the story. This is clearly a tenuous situation and requires patience by the practitioner to get to answers.
This story has twists and turns and so many unknowns that I honestly don’t think that I ever suspected the ending as it was. That was a pleasant surprise. At first I was expecting the typical tropes. There is enough of a plot to this that it leads the reader with many possibilities throughout the book.
I felt that this was an excellent evaluation of the fallibility and strength of humans and really delved deeper into the psychological aspects than would normally be done in a thriller. I appreciated this extra effort.
My only reason for dropping it from a 5star was that the ending felt rushed. The story is clearly leading us with a finale, it seemed like so much is thrown at us in the final part that I was sure that I had missed something. It lost some of the previous flow of the story. I suspect this was an editing decision and it took away from the story and it’s believability somewhat for me.
#ThePerfectDaughter #NetGalley #StMartinsPress

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read The Perfect Daughter

A dead woman....a teenager covered in blood found at the murder scene... a young girl with multiple personality disorder ... a mother who stands by her daughter no matter what

✔️this was a great psychological thriller that was hard to put down
✔️ the character of Penny/Eve was fascinating to read
✔️Grace’s devotion to her adopted daughter was commendable
✔️I enjoyed the various different POVs

✖️ definitely didn’t see the ending but it also just seemed too far fetched
✖️ the whole thing with Penny’s brother Ryan was just not needed at all in this book

Overall, this was headed for a 4.5-5 ⭐️ rating but that ending just didn’t work for me. However, still highly recommend reading it!

What starts as a slow-burning thriller ends in a crescendo of intensity as D.J. Palmer’s newest thriller, The Perfect Daughter, explores the often-terrifying intersection of mental health disorders and the criminal justice system.

Palmer consistently opens his novels with a bang, and The Perfect Daughter is no exception. The story opens with Grace, a widow and mother to Ryan, Jack, and Penny, opening her front door to two police officers and finding that her teenaged daughter has been arrested…for murder. Based on the evidence at the scene, there is little question of guilt or innocence, but police are not yet aware that Penny is not always Penny.

After several issues in early adolescence, Grace began taking Penny to psychiatrists and Penny was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder. Due to this diagnosis and the seriousness of the crime, Penny is held in a psychiatric hospital while waiting for trial, but her mother never loses faith in her belief that Penny is not responsible for this brutal crime. As Penny’s doctor and her mother attempt to help unlock whatever information Penny’s personalities have buried, they ultimately begin to unlock darker and darker secrets.

Filled with more three-dimensional characters than any other book I have read recently, Palmer truly brings the reader inside the world of this story. Of course, there is a main character, but rather than everyone else simply playing the role they have in that main character’s life we get to see and know about the lives, thoughts, and feelings of those other characters as well. For instance, we don’t just see the doctor in the psychiatric hospital solely in his role as it relates to Grace’s daughter. We learn about him beyond this position and see some of what his life is like apart from who he is in Grace and her daughter’s story. It helps the reader understand the motivations of some characters, but also creates a more vivid world for the reader to drop in to.

Telling this story through multiple flashbacks and varying points of view also helps the reader learn more about all the characters, how they feel and what they think, rather than each of them being nothing but a part of someone else’s story. This gave the entire book a much more real-world feeling.

Full of twists and turns, readers will stay busy trying to guess just what is coming around the corner. But much like the poorly funded state psychiatric facility where a lot of the story takes place, there are some surprises that you will never be able to anticipate, and you better be on your toes and be ready for them!

Penny Francone was anything but the perfect daughter. Penny is accused of murder and her mother is her fiercest supporter. Penny has Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) we know it as multiple personalities. I was expecting a non-stop thriller from DJ Palmer. The story dragged on way too long. I get that Penny's DID was a focal point of the story but all of the sessions with her doctor and the backstory and unnecessary backstory teasers were a bit much. Penny's mom, Grace believed in her daughter's innocence so strongly she alienated her other children and her family business to fight for her daughter.

DJ Palmer didn't disappoint with the fast-paced climax but by the end, it was sort of a letdown to me. There was something missing for me in this story. I give it a strong 3.5 for the ending. Thank you Netgalley and publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I do not read a lot of thrillers, these days they have become a dime a dozen. I happened to choose this one and I am glad I did. It is so masterfully written, I was drawn right into it.

I'm not even sure if “thriller” is the right classification. It is also a murder mystery, a medical mystery and a family drama.

The premise of the book is very simple. The birth mother of a young girl is found brutally murdered. The young girl suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder. (DID) (also known as Multiple Personality Disorder) This young girl is now in a psychiatric hospital awaiting trial. But, she might be not aware of committing the murder because it could have been one of her alternate personalities.

While the premise is simple, the execution of the story is complex. The author has done extensive research on the issue of DID. I trust the disorder has been accurately represented in the story.

The major characters are very well developed and believably portrayed. The mother will stop at nothing to see her daughter get justice. The doctor (who has his own demons) is putting a lot of effort to discover what may have happened because of the personality disorder.

While reading this book I had several prime suspects in my head. Those suspects changed back and forth with every page I turned.
But, I did not figure out the actual ending. It truly was a surprise! Well done!

The ending was good. I loved how everything was nicely wrapped up, all the loose ends were no longer loose.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own

THE PERFECT DAUGHTER BOOK REVIEW

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Drink rec: Raspberry Mojito

As someone in the mental health field, books with a mental health focus (especially thrillers) can be very hit or miss for me. That being said, I really enjoyed THE PERFECT DAUGHTER!

The main character, Penny, has Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. This story revolves around Penny’s adopted mother, Grace, trying to figure out if Penny murdered her birth mother, if it was one of her alters, or someone else all together.

I could tell that Palmer did his research on what DID is and his depictions of Penny seemed realistic and not over-sensationalized. I also appreciated how he noted that not all people with a mental illness are violent!!

I really enjoyed trying to put all of these puzzle pieces together and found the ending to be (mostly) a surprise! My only critique is that I felt like a few parts dragged on and some of the details could have been left out in the middle.

Overall, if you are into psychological thrillers with unreliable narrators, you should pick this one up! Thank you to @stmartinspress for my gifted copy! THE PERFECT DAUGHTER is out 4/20!

What an amazing beginning to The Perfect Daughter. Grace, mother of Penny, Jack, and Ryan returns home from a run and finds her recently deceased husband’s car missing. She sees two police cars arrive and finds out that her daughter was found covered in blood by the body of Rachel who we find out was her birth mother. My attention is immediately drawn to this story.

The story moves from present to past to find out how Grace and her husband, Arthur, come to adopt Penny Isabella Floyd. The story is also told from different points of view including her son, Jack, who is filming the story for a college class. We find out that Penny was diagnosed with DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder). The lawyer gets the judge to place Penny in a mental hospital until the trial. The majority of the book takes place here where a new doctor, Dr. Mitch McHugh, works with Penny and discovers other personalities of Eve, Ruby and Chloe.

I really liked the beginning, and I sure felt my heart drop to the floor for Grace as she tries to help her daughter. The plot moves back and forth in time as we find out how Grace and Arthur happened to adopt Penny and her early life with the family to the present time with Penny becoming a patient. For me, the book began to drag at the hospital. I think the plot could be tightened up during this huge section of the book. The trial did not start until the last twenty percent of the book. I am glad I made it that far as there are some twists I sure did not see coming. My thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an ARC of this book. The opinions are my own in this review.

Penny has a dissociative disorder, a case of multiple personalities, one of whom is a murderer and she is currently in an really awful institution which doesn’t help the the anguish for her adoptive mother Grace. Over the years leading up to a murder, Grace has sought help for her daughter and one doctor feels Penny is fabricating her disease for attention, another believes a Penny is dangerous. But is she capable of murder? Fascinating story. Often difficult to read but impossible to put down.

I love how this book is constructed - with different points of view in each chapter, but all telling the same story. It's interesting to see how Penny - the perfect daughter - ends up accused of a crime she doesn't remember committing (thanks to her dissociative identity disorder), and how her family, especially her mother, will work hard to prove her innocence - or at least prove that she couldn't understand what was happening due to her mental illness. But the story is not necessarily linear with just one narrator, and that's what makes it more compelling. There's Penny point of view, there's the mother's point of view, there's the psychiatrist point of view, and also there's the brother's point of view. From each one of them, we learn a bit more about that happened and especially about how it happened.

About:

The book opens with Grace Francone, mother to Ryan, Jack, and sixteen-year-old Penny—the youngest—who’s arrested for murder.

Penny’s fate is most assuredly sealed, found in the victim's apartment, holding the murder weapon and covered in the victim’s blood—her guilt is beyond doubt.

The only question is, where will she serve her sentence:

Will the jury find her not guilty by reason of insanity?

Or will she get a life sentence in a maximum-security prison?

‘As Penny awaits trial in a state mental hospital, she is treated by Dr. Mitchell McHugh, a psychiatrist battling demons of his own. Grace’s determination to understand the why behind her daughter’s terrible crime fuels Mitch’s resolve to help the Francone family.’

My Thoughts:

As a mother, it’s easy to empathize with Grace as she struggles to keep her family together, keep the family business from going under, all while trying to prove her daughter’s innocence.

Palmer did an excellent job keeping this reader guessing throughout. I honestly thought I knew how it would end, but nope!

THE PERFECT DAUGHTER—Recommend!

Thank you, NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press, for loaning me an eGalley of THE PERFECT DAUGHTER in the request for an honest review.

Scheduled To Release – April 20, 2021 (Subject To Change)

I will leave a review on Amazon or B&N on April 20th

Wow the outcome of this book was certainly a shocker, one that I didn't figure out ahead of time. I have several of this authors books in the past and enjoyed each one of them, but this one certainly took it too another level. I really enjoyed the book, and it kept me turning the pages. I most definitely would recommend this book to everyone.

I received a ARC from NetGalley and the publisher, and this is my fair and honest review.

Thank you to netgalley for giving me an arc for reviewing.
I was a bit nervous starting this book with our suspect having a mental health issues, but from my pov not having DID i thought it was handled well. There was a lot of time spent explaining things.

I love that there enough wild cards that you don't put things fully together till the end. I was just obsessively reading at the end to find out everything.

I didn't enjoy the brothers. I did like some of Jack's stories of their relationship and could have used more, but his pov took me out of the rhythm. I also found the other brother's role unesssecrary.

4.5 Stars
.
A riveting exploration of dissociative identity disorder (DID, or multiple personalities)
Grace has a great family, a husband and two boys. What she's always wanted though was a daughter. When she finds a young girl abandoned in a park she knows it's fate and the chance to make her dream come true. The girl is non-communicative though and because they were lucky to find her they call her Penny. Things seem to be perfect until the cops show up to tell Grace her daughter, Penny was arrested after she was found over the body of a mutilated woman, covered in blood and holding the knife, she also calls herself Eve. Grace wants to believe her little girl couldn't do such a thing so it must have been one of her alters, but which one?
I found this to be a well researched, taught psychological thriller/courtroom drama with fleshed out characters that I wanted to root for. Told from the perspectives of Grace, Penny's attending psychiatrist, Dr Mitch McHugh and her son, Jack, a film student documenting the story. With plenty of red herrings thrown in along the way to muddy the waters, the final reveal came as a shock as I didn't see it coming. I've loved the author's previous books and this one didn't disappoint.

Well darn, I so wanted to really like this book but I think this wasn't the right book for me at this point in time. There were parts that engaged me - how a mother would go to any lengths to keep her daughter out of prison and the various opinions regarding DID (dissociative identity disorder) and how it might keep Penny out of prison. The various personalities of Penny also challenged me to stay focused. The issues I had with the story came with the multiple points of view - I had a hard time staying focused on each one (that's just me) and the story was too long making parts of it drag.
I enjoyed his previous book, The New Husband and I will give his next book a chance. Maybe I needed a more light weight read during these trying times. My thanks to the publisher St. Martin's and NetGalley for giving me an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

Wow, ever read a book that you swear would make an amazing movie? This is it!!!! This book is totally it. We meet Grace, a mother who will do anything to try to prove that her daughter Penny is innocent from a cry that she didn't commit, or did she? We find out in the SAME chapter that Penny has Multiple Personality Disorder, and she is in deep trouble yet again. Each chapter had me on edge it was a page turner. Each and every single character were great, and I loved Grace and her persistence, this woman did not give up!

And what's a thriller without some secrets!!! There were secrets in every corner, all the way until the end, this book kept me guessing. Penny and her "alters" is what made this book what it is, it was informative, it was a rollercoaster of emotions, and I had to stop reading some parts and yell "NOOOOOOO WAYYYYYYYYYY."

Totally worth the read cant wait until it launches so I can brag about it some more. Thanks Netgalley, the publishers and the author for giving me the opportunity to read this book.

What a great book! D J Palmer never disappoints. He tackles mental illness full speed ahead. Penny has multiple personally disorder and has been arrested for murder.
I really cared about Grace, Penny's mom, the emotions she decided for her daughter were so realistic. The best part of the story though was the ending. What a SHOCK!! I love it when I am wrong about who done.It and boy was.I wrong this time! This is a great thriller and I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys this genre. Another great job Mr. palmer!

Thank you Net Galley for allowing me to read this incredible ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Penny is a young woman locked away in a psychiatric hospital on suspicion of murder. She claims to have no memory of it. The hospital psychiatrist is working to figure out if Penny is a psychopath or if she has Disassociate Dissociative Identity Disorder (also known as Multiple Personality Disorder).

The story centers around Grace, a mom who finds an abandoned child on a playground, and then adopts her later. They name the girl Penny, and she becomes part of the family, completing it according to Grace. Now Grace is in a fight to keep Penny out of jail while keeping her family pizza restaurant open.

The story progresses giving us glimpses into Penny’s head as the trial date looms closer. Grace is working closely with an attorney to help Penny. This one kept me on my toes and the ultimate reveal came as a complete shock to me! The psychology portion was fascinating, and I thought the author did a great job researching and writing about that. I have to deduct a bit for the final court scene which was a bit over the top for this reader!

Thank you to Netgalley, St. Martin's Press and D.J.Palmer for a digital arc of this book.

This book has the best parts of a good thriller in my opinion. It starts out with a mother answering the door to find out that her daughter has been arrested for murder. Okay... let's go!
We take off on a journey with a young girl who has Dissociative Identity Disorder, DID. So we have an unreliable narrative and mental illness at the core of this book. This always makes for a fun read. I was intrigued and captivated and of course, looking at every person in the story line as a possible suspect.

Penny was left in a park when she was four years old. Grace and her son Jack find her and bring her home, eventually the family adopts her. Penny develops some strange behavior over the course of time by developing alternative personalities, or as we come to learn DID. This is her bodies way of coping with severe drama that she suffered as a young child.

Penny has two older brothers in her adoptive family, Ryan, who has always been jealous of all the attention his sister gets and Jack, who is portrayed as her protective older brother. Jack is one of my favorite side characters as we get to see his POV at times as he is a film student using his sisters case for a school project. This is a fun way to break up some of the intensity and add to the story in a great way.

Penny story takes on many twists and turns as we try to unravel what really happened the night of her birth mother's murder. I enjoyed it fully!! The author did a lot of research and was able to keep the reader guessing. I liked the way it ended. Were there some parts that were questionable? Maybe, but I am reading for the enjoyment of it and there wasn't anything that made me think this was absolutely unbelievable. I am looking forward to reading more from this author.

What can I say about The Perfect Daughter by D.J. Palmer, other than this book is absolutely perfect! After having previously read The New Husband by D.J. Palmer, I could not wait to get my hands on this latest release. The Perfect Daughter was everything that I look for in a thriller. The suspense kept me on the edge of my seat, every character was suspect, and I didn’t want to do anything else until I finished this book!
In addition to being a great thriller, I also learned quite a bit about dissociative identity disorder (DID). I feel that DID isn’t something that’s spoken about often, and I definitely have not read anything about it in any of the other fiction/thriller novels that I have read. I always love when I can learn something while I am enjoying a favorite read.
I am currently adding D.J. Palmer to my list of must read authors, because I do not want to miss anything else that he writes (and you probably won’t either)! I highly recommend reading The Perfect Daughter, as you will not be disappointed!

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for my early digital copy in exchange for an honest review :) Release date April 20, 2021.