The Seasonal Reading Challenge discussion

This is the discussion thread for the Winter 2024 Group Read Darling Girls in the category Fiction: Australian-Crime . Please post your comments here. This thread is not restricted to those choosing this book for task 20.10, feel free to join in the discussion. Warning- spoilers ahead!

The requirement for task 20.10: You must participate in the book's discussion thread below with at least one post about the contents of the book or your reaction to the book after you have read the book.

This was wild and my first Sally Hepworth book. I liked the writing but I wasn't a fan of the story. It just wasn't for me. I rated it 3 stars.

I will be reading her other novels though. It's definitely a me problem as the reviews on this was great. I just didn't think it was very suspenseful.

I have read several books by this author and enjoyed them. This is not as appealing to me because it deals primarily about children that have lost their parents as infants or a very young age. Hepworth deals with the feelings of the children themselves as well as their caretakers and while within the realm of reality and a not so sad ending I 'd rather spend time on more constructive solutions to the problem.

Fair warning: I had hoped to read the nonfiction selection for this season. When voting, I decided the only nominee I was completely uninterested in reading was the one that was chosen. I'm not much of a Stacy Schiff fan, and I've already read quite a lot about the Salem Witch Trials, so what appears to be her generic overview of the episode wasn't appealing. I needed another selection, and since Libby had quick availability for both the Kindle and audio, Darling Girls was my pick.

I went in thinking I wasn't going to love it, and I was right. The writing was good, and the mystery was decent - the issue for me was the subject matter. It ended well, so that was a plus, and even I figured out several things in advance, there were a few surprises. I gave it three stars, but I don't feel the need to seek out any of Sally Hepworth's other works.

For a book that's MPG Thriller and Suspense, I felt it was lacking much of both.

4 STARS ★★★★☆ (4/5)

Was not expecting that ending...

Read this as part of the SRC seasonal reading challenge/BOTM and I was pleasently surprised.
I was hooked to this book.

Liked
❤️The characters
❤️The plot
❤️The twists
❤️That ending!


Loathed
💔 I didn't want to loath this book however there was just one point which I genuinely disliked. I felt like the execution of the time stamps could've been arranged better. It just got a bit confusing to keep track sometimes.

All in all, a suspenseful, heartfelt read.

This was an OK book, but not going to send me out to read her other books. I listened to the book and also thought that the jumping around in time could have been handled a little better.

I chose this book because I like mysteries, but I felt the mystery was dull. There needed to be more of investigation versus background, but there was the little twist at the end to make it a bit more interesting. I felt that the book focused more on the effect of the characters' traumatic childhoods and I wanted more mystery. For someone who reads mysteries, it just didn't catch my attention and I probably only made it through because I was listening to it on a very long drive time this weekend.

I really liked this book about three girls, chosen sisters, and their upbringing in foster care which is, of course, linked to the mystery. Nothing is what it seems and I liked the alternating narrative between the characters. As others said, past and present chapters could have been better labeled.
It was a sensitive subjet and sometimes hard to read. I did not see the final twist coming. 4 ★★★★

3.5 stars rounded up.

New to me author. I would read another book by this author, but I didn't like this enough to go check out her other books and add them to my TBR.

As this book was nominated in the Australian Crime category, I was hoping for a little more of Australia. The setting for this book was not relevant, not obvious -- with a few word changes this could be set in Canada, USA, Europe.

The top tag for this book is Thriller, but that doesn't seem quite right to me. I think I'd go with mystery.

I did like the wrap up at the end, a little epilogue for all of the sisters but the very end (view spoiler)[ I don't know if that was really necessary..... If she was that awful as a teenager, I would have expected her to be even more awful than she was as an adult. I would have expected more physical violence. (hide spoiler)]

Amy FL

I read a lot of mysteries and thrillers, so my expectations for this book were high based on its 4-star rating. Sadly, it didn't live up to the hype; it was slow and lacked character development. The three girls went from coexisting in the foster home to becoming inseparable as adults without any real explanation for how this happened.

The twist at the very end saved it for me and allowed me to round it up to 3 stars from 2.5.

I just finished this book and liked the ending. At about half-way thru I thought about switching to another of the group read selections. Child abuse is a hard subject to read about and this made me feel uncomfortable.

I have read and liked most of Sally Hepworth's books, so I expected to like this one, and I did, despite the subject matter, which I would not expect to find warm and cozy. The child abuse is intense and disturbing. I listened to the audiobook, with an Australian narrator. I agree with a previous review that the book did not contain much distinctive Australian flavor for a selection in this group reads category. For "Australian Crime" I would vastly prefer Jane Harper's books, but as a domestic/psychological thriller (though low on actual thrills), this one was OK, set in Australia and written by an Australian author.

I read this book in one sitting earlier this week, and on the whole I enjoyed it. I think I enjoyed it more because I read it to take a break from another book that I was slogging through, and this was a breath of fresh air comparatively.

Looking back after reading it, I wasn't super surprised by any twists, nor did I think of it as a "true mystery/thriller" at any point. That being said, I did want to keep reading to find out what happened, and enjoyed the flashbacks vs. the present. I think part of the reason I just wanted to read it in one go was also because of some of the subject matter and I knew I wouldn't want to go back to the psychological abuse if I got out of the book.

I would recommend this book to others, but definitely not to everyone.

I enjoyed this book. I didn't think the final twist was that shocking, but I'm glad it was included. I will definitely read more from this author.

This was kind of a hard book to read dealing with child abuse and the mystery of a dead child buried beneath a house. I did rate this a 4 because it did have me reading it to the end to find out "the rest of the story." A book with this subject matter is not one that I would normally read.

This book was solid in my opinion. I enjoyed reading it even though the mystery was really easy to figure out. I enjoyed the author's writing style even when I wasn't really a big fan of the characters. I felt for them and what they'd been through, and their issues were understandable, but it left them not entirely likeable for large swaths of the story.

Everything wraps up neatly, though this was less of a mystery novel per se as we really don't get much into any sort of investigation. The reveals of what the girls went through with the flashbacks had me guessing the reality of things pretty early.

I nominated this book because I have read other mystery/thriller books by Hepworth which I really enjoyed.

I liked this book, but didn't love it like others of hers I've read. It was a quick read and did keep me turning the pages; however, the adult "sisters" just didn't elicit much sympathy from me. I think the characters needed to be better fleshed out as adults. The story told in their younger years was much more engaging. There were many twists which I appreciated even if I had some sense where things were going. All in all, I rated it 3.5 stars.

I found 'Darling Girls' misclassified as a thriller or mystery, as it lacked elements of suspense or intrigue. It was primarily a character driven piece of fiction. Perhaps if it hadn't been billed as a thriller I would have been kinder in my review. The characters failed to elicit sympathy, and the subplots appeared underdeveloped. While the premise was promising, the execution was lacking. Consequently, I won't be adding more of Hepworth's novels to my reading list and have rated this one 2 stars.

I'll admit that I don't usually read many recent psychological suspense. I usually find them better at building to something? and failing to end in an interesting manner. But this was the most interesting sounding SRC Group Read this season, so here we are.

This a story of foster children, especially the three main characters, that have all lived at the same home in Australia. We get some information about the current lives of our main three before it is announced that a body has been found underneath the foster home. The rest of the book alternates between the current (when the foster girls all arrive in the Victoria small town), the past, and a number of psychiatric sessions from an unknown time.

Quite frankly, I didn't really like any of the main characters. The ending, which serves as a type of epilogue, did make me feel somewhat better about some. I felt, all along, that we were dealing with an unreliable narrator here; so, you can judge how you like that type of suspense novel.

I realize this has been popular, it's just really not for me at this point. I did like some of the psych suspense in the 20th century, but have moved on to other subgenres. I was curious about about what was going on, but that's it. My grandkids might like it better!

JenJ IA

This was my first Sally Hepworth book and I overall enjoyed the story even though much of the story deals with very difficult topics. The amount of abuse endured by the characters was heartbreaking. I enjoyed the structure of the story and the way the timeline switched to give a description from the past that connected with the story in present day. I am interested in trying some of Sally Hepworth's other books after reading Darling Girls.

Rebecca NJ

I finished this book a few weeks ago and have been trying to put my thoughts into words. I have liked other books by Sally Hepworth and while I liked Darling Girls, I feel that it did lack the "thriller" aspect that other have mentioned. I was intrigued by the dynamics of the three women but sometimes found them to be a little annoying. When everything came together in the last 50 pages, I wasn't too shocked but I was happy with the way it all came together.

Bookwrm526

I think I agree with a lot of the reviews here. I wouldn't have picked this book up on my own - I like Australian crime novels generally, and I like thrillers, but the subject matter didn't interest me at all. It was the easiest option to get, though, so I went with it.

I enjoyed the relationships the sisters were able to build despite their situation. I really like the epilogues for each sister and that they were at least hopeful. The righting was pretty good.

On the other hand, I didn't like the descriptions of the abuse. I didn't find the endings at all surprising - I think the author telegraphed the "twist" in the foster mother's story a little too much with the prurient interest the therapist was taking in the story. It was just .... meh.

I would be interested in some of the author's other work on a different topic but I don't know that I'll seek them out.

I read this book over a few weeks, only because the topic was so hard for me to stomach. As a parent who has made mistakes in parenting that I still regret, and someone who received parental abuse from a narcissistic mother, this book brought up a lot of hard and sad feelings.

However, the plot was so intriguing, I couldn't wait for the book to end to figure out what had really happened. I've read many books about foster kids and the abuse they've endured, but this book was different for some reason to me. Perhaps it is the fact that it is a novel and not a fictionalized story of a real child. Perhaps it is the fact that I am not the same person I was years ago when I first explored this topic through reading. Perhaps it is simply that Sally Hepworth is an impeccable writer.

I can't wait to read more of Hepworth's writing!