A page turner.. a fast paced clever novel that will make a terrific Netflix series. The chronology was a bit jumbled because the narrative jumped from one person’s point of view to another without following the story line. It’s a fun read with a few weak plot points. You never find out what happened to the inheritance the lawyer had saved. I read it almost in one sitting. The resolution was a bit expected if you followed the clues but I did like it.

I received a free copy from Net galley in exchange for an honest review.

Wow, this one hit just right! A daughter who has a difficult and estranged relationship with her Mother comes to dinner to find her missing and signs of a struggle. College aged Cleo starts trying to investigate what her Mom was doing up until that to figure out what happened and if there is a chance she's still alive. Driven a little by guilt over the state of their relationship and also on memories on when they were close she is driven to the point of recklessness.

The story is told in alternating view points of the Mom, Kat, set in the weeks before she went missing and the daughter, Cleo from the time her Mom went missing onwards. Interspersed are brief journal entries, lawsuit briefs and text conversations with no notations about who wrote them. This does lead to some early confusion about what exactly is going on but I found it like a puzzle with the pieces scattered and as we read the picture starts coming together and we see more and more as it goes along.

I think one of the reasons this was such a good fit for me was that there are two levels to this story. There is the mystery of what happened to Kat but alongside that is the unraveling of what happened to lead mother and daughter to the places they are now. Initially both can be difficult characters who make poor decisions but as the story progresses you understand better why they make some of the mistakes and choices that they do. It was really interesting to dive into that along with the mystery. I thought it was well done too the way it was interspersed.

Another aspect I appreciated is that any twists are built into the story organically and don't come out of left field. One reason why I am careful abut picking suspense books is because the latest trick with many of them is to come out of left field with gotchas that were thrown in there merely for the sake of a twist or shock value. Those always make me feel manipulated as a reader. However, in this book any twists and turns are built into the the story and events surrounding the characters and make sense to the plot. In other words, they aren't there merely for the sake of a twist.

This book would be a great book club pick as there is a lot to dive into and unpack. As a matter of fact I will be recommending it to my book club and this is a book where I know I will pick up on a lot of things with a second reading. So if your book club wants a mystery/suspense, especially if the readers are women (as we are all at least daughters and some of us Mothers) then I highly recommend this book for some potentially great discussions.

This book had a great premise. Cleo gets a text from her mother Katrina to come home and talk. When she arrives her mother is no where to be found, dinner is burning in the oven and there is a pool of blood on the floor. . We get Cleo's point of view and we get Katrina's point of view before she goes missing. This book was just all over the place for me. We have a volatile mother / daughter relationship, a fractured marriage, a lawsuit involving a pharmaceutical drug and something terrible that happened in Katrina's childhood in foster care. I kept reading and waiting for something to tie all of this together. It just seemed disjointed to me and I never really got into the story.
Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for a copy of this book for review.

BOOK REPORT
Received a complimentary copy of Like Mother, Like Daughter by Kimberly McCreight from Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor/NetGalley, for which I am appreciative, in exchange for a fair and honest review. Scroll past the BOOK REPORT section for a cut-and-paste of the DESCRIPTION of it from them if you want to read my thoughts on the book in the context of that summary.

Wanted to read this book because in one of my past lives I was a fixer, albeit not as an attorney with some hotshot New York law firm. And albeit not one who made a ka-jillion dollars. Or broke any laws.

That I know of.

Anywhoodles…..it’s rare that I find myself agreeing with any sort of advance blurb, but in this case “smart, propulsive” absolutely fits the bill. And while I disagree with author Laura Dave, who said that about this book, I disagree that it was “impossible to put down.” But it did offer some easy escapism on a cold January Sunday afternoon, and taught me a few new acronyms (GGG and ENF, both related to online dating, for which I think I would be entirely unsuited were My Beloved to precede me in death, for all manner of reasons).

As is the case with me when it comes to a lot of mystery/psychological thriller books set in the current day and time, I found myself thinking as I read that this would make a really good streaming series. Just enough different storylines to keep a few red herrings floating to the top of the barrel for most of the book.

Looking forward to reading more by Kimberly McCreight.

PS
This isn’t really a spoiler, I don’t think. Or I dunno, maybe it is. So maybe skip this PS? Which is really just a question: What was the resolution regarding the $3 million? I called myself reading the Epilogue twice to find out, but that thread, she still seems loose…..

DESCRIPTION
From the New York Times best-selling author of Reconstructing Amelia: A daughter races to uncover her mother's secret life in the wake of her disappearance in this "breathless, shocking thriller." —Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times best-selling author

“Kim McCreight’s thrillers are smart, propulsive and impossible to put down.” —Laura Dave, author of The Last Thing He Told Me

When Cleo, a student at NYU, arrives late for dinner at her childhood home in Brooklyn, she finds food burning in the oven and no sign of her mother, Kat. Then Cleo discovers her mom’s bloody shoe under the sofa. Something terrible has happened.

But what? The polar opposite of Cleo, whose “out of control” emotions and “unsafe” behavior have created a seemingly unbridgeable rift between mother and daughter, Kat is the essence of Park Slope perfection: a happily married, successful corporate lawyer. Or so Cleo thinks.

Kat has been lying. She’s not just a lawyer; she’s her firm’s fixer. She’s damn good at it, too. Growing up in a dangerous group home taught her how to think fast, stay calm under pressure, and recognize a real threat when she sees one. And in the days leading up her disappearance, Kat has become aware of multiple threats: demands for money from her unfaithful soon-to-be ex-husband; evidence that Cleo has slipped back into a relationship that’s far riskier than she understands; and menacing anonymous messages from her past—all of which she’s kept hidden from Cleo . . .

Like Mother, Like Daughter is a thrilling novel of emotional suspense that questions the damaging fictions we cling to and the hard truths we avoid. Above all, it’s a love story between a mother and a daughter, each determined to save the other before it’s too late.

I really enjoy Kimberly McCreight's adult fiction so was very disappointed to not like Like Mother, Like Daughter. The story begins with a mom missing while dinner cooking, broken glass on the ground with some drops of blood. Then there is the addition of many side characters including a self-involved college age daughter, her drug dealer ex-boyfriend, a current mystery boyfriend, an estranged husband who needs lots of money, a guy she is dating who dies under mysterious circumstances, shady co-workers. And multiple side plots like the mother's mysterious job, her childhood that includes living in a group home, a pharmaceutical company responsible for a drug that causes birth defects. These are not even all the characters and plot lines. While I typically like a few different storylines and perspectives going at once, it did not work here. This is a "me' problem, but I find I do not like hearing a teen/young adult's perspective so being in the daughter's head was annoying to me. The twists were not surprising, the characters were not well developed, the ending was very anti-climatic and a few plot points were unrealistic. I would have DNF'ed except I trusted McCreight to bring it all together in the end; unfortunately this did not happen. This book was a bit of a mess to me and could have used a strong editor, with a few less characters and subplots. I am hoping this is a one off and her next book will be a winner for me. 2.5 stars, rounded down to 2.

Wow! This was an ARC I had five days to read for free and boy I had no trouble accomplishing that! Kat and Cleo have had Mother, daughter issues for years but things got worse when Kat discovered Cleo was saying a dry dealer at NYU. Kat is a lawyer who works as a “fixer” in corporate law so things she does are usually in a gray area of legal. Cleo agrees to come home one weekend and o upon arrival finds blood and one bloody shoe but no Kat. Cleo’s dad is a cheating money hungry man who has already been kicked out of the house months ago. Cleo looks exactly like her mom and has her quick mind and detective skills. The only person she trusts to help find her is a boyfriend who is a good bit older but seems reasonable and helpful. There’s always something happening in this story and I am so glad I read it! If you like mysteries, this is for you!! Well done!

2.5 ⭐
This book is filled to the brim with a lot of characters all of who are very unlikeable and at lack a total sense of ethics, morals and values. Cleo is a very immature daughter who has a very stranded relationship with Katrina, her mother. Katrina is a lawyer who seems to be well respected in her field. However, her deteriorating marriage is a large focus of this story. Adian who is Kat's husband is depicted as a total scumbag and and then there is Doug who kept dates for a short while before he is killed in a car accident. Details about Doug's shady involvement in a prescription drug they should have been recalled comes till late in addition to a scandal with college admissions, which makes him just as unlikeable as the rest of the characters in this story.

I foud the dialogue to be a little annoying at times as there is an excessive use of italic print to display emphasis in conversations. Conversations also have many interruptions among characters which I found frustrating to read through. There also seem to be a lot of redundant retelling of events over many pages and chapters.

The format of this book is very off-putting. It bounces around in dual timelines between cat's point of view before she went missing and Cleo's point of view after she went missing. Then there are strange additions in between chapters at times where there might be a Reddit review or a court document that transcribes a conversation in addition to conversation recordings that occur between Cleo and her therapist. I felt that this took me out of the storyline itself and just made it confusing to follow.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

This was a perfectly well-executed thriller with an interesting plot and characters that I liked. But it didn't quite have that "wow" factor that tips it over into a true page turner. But readers will enjoy it!

I reviewed Like mother Like Daughter and thought it was very interesting. I liked the original concept of this book.

This was quite the gripping ride, with twists and turns. I thought the first quarter of the book was a bit slow (with multiple points of view and timelines), but then the pace took off, and I couldn't put the book down. A rich, satisfying read with a surprising ending.

Wow this book had me guessing up until the very end! I loved the twist and turns throughout, and I could not trust anyone. I really thought the husband did it and I was surprised by who he had an affair with the reveal. I liked the backstory of the characters which made them all deceiving.

Not only is this a great thriller, but it is also a great portrayal of the mother/daughter relationship and the ways mothers are shaped to raise their own daughters by their pasts, mothers and lack of mothers. Mothers and daughters struggle, not understanding each other or seeing eye to eye without understanding that they are really more alike than they think.

This book was very hard to put down. There are many twists and turns, and it was very hard to figure out exactly who was to blame.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review.

This thriller throws you right on into the plot, which is fun! But does not allow for much character development or background. It was full of twists, but also a bit unrealistic, and there were a few sections/outtakes I did not understand. I’ll round up to 4 stars!

Thank you very much to Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the advanced reader’s copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5. Like Mother, Like Daughter by Kimberly McCreight. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for this advanced reader copy. Publication date is July 2024, and I predict this will be the book of the summer! What a great read! NYU student Cleo heads home to Brooklyn to catch up with her mom, but when she gets there, corporate lawyer Kat isn’t in their brownstone. There’s blood on the floor and signs of a struggle. Kat has gone missing. Cleo soon discovers many new things about her mom. Apparently, she’s not a boring patent attorney; she’s a fixer. Her parents are in the middle of a divorce and there’s a lot of money hanging in the balance. Cleo races around NY trying to figure out where her mom went, and there are many potential suspects. I could not put this one down. So many plot twists! Highly recommend!

Book Court - Where I’m the Judge and Jury

Docket Page 78. Like Mother, Like Daughter by Kimberly McCreight

CHARGE (What was the author trying to say?): You can’t escape your past.

FACTS: Katrina McHugh, a successful attorney, is haunted by growing up in an orphanage. When her past physically intrudes into her present, threatening her college-age daughter Cleo, Kat must confront the actions of her past and deal with the consequences. I was not a fan of the shifting timeline. I enjoy a story told in a more chronological fashion. While the story seemed at times to move at a snail’s pace, the ending seemed rushed – quickly tying up all the loose ends into a neat (though somewhat unbelievable) package.

VERDICT (Was the author successful?): Guilty, as charged.

#NetGalley #LikeMotherLikeDaughter

This one is getting a lot of really positive reviews and I was excited to read it. The story starts off really great and I was invested in the story. Cleo's mom calls her home but when she gets there her mom is missing. There is food cooking, a bloody scene and a random shoe. This is an intro worth digging into. Sadly for me the story goes downhill from there. I did like that it is told from both women's POV's and that the timeline was not linear but I found myself bored. Considering how many positive reviews this book already has, I thought for sure it would get better but for me it just never did. This is a book that many readers will (and do) enjoy so take this review with a grain of salt.

Thanks to NetGalley, Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, Knopf and Kimberly McCreight for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I’m a sucker for a thriller and this one did not disappoint. This was a complete page turner. I really enjoyed the surprises, twists, and turns.

This book was just ok. I wished the story told more from the mother's point of view when she was living in the group home and how the older woman had adopted her. I wanted things to end badly with the husband and his movie production after the whole money issue. But you just don't know what ended up happening.

I believe this was just the book to get me back into reading! I have been in such a reading slump. I’m talking months long and McCreight grabbed my attention from the very beginning. I was constantly going back and forth in my mind of who I thought “done it”. I was totally captivated by the ending and did not see it panning out the way it did. I started realizing who it was just about 95% through but not to the exact “T”. This book will make you stay up until 3am reading to find out how it ends! 5 stars ✨ Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC. Do yourself a favor and add it to your list!

3.5 stars
The relationship between Cleo and Katrina as mother and daughter is complicated and realistic. They are both strong willed women, stuck dealing with trauma and consequences of their relationships with manipulative men.
Through Katrina’s disappearance, Cleo is able to learn more about her mothers life, and understand her on a much deeper level. While I don’t agree with a lot of the things that Katrina did, her past trauma does explain her thought process behind her decisions
This is a thriller, so I don’t want to say too much about Katrina’s disappearance and it’s outcome. There were a lot of intertwining personal relationships among characters that could be messy to keep track of; and the big twist was slightly disappointing. But still an engaging read!. .