Review: Not Her Daughter by Rea Frey

Not Her Daughter by Rea Frey

Expected Publication: August 21, 2018

Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin

Format: via NetGalley

Rating: 4/5

Synopsis

Emma Grace Townsend. Five years old. Gray eyes. Brown hair. Missing since June.

Emma Townsend is lonely. Living with her cruel mother and clueless father, Emma retreats into her own world of quiet and solitude.

Sarah Walker. Successful Entrepreneur. Broken-hearted. Abandoned by her mother. Kidnapper.

Sarah has never seen a girl so precious as the gray-eyed child in a crowded airport terminal—and when a second-chance encounter with Emma presents itself, Sarah takes her, far away from home. But if it’s to rescue a little girl from her damaging mother, is kidnapping wrong?

Amy Townsend. Unhappy wife. Unfit mother. Unsure she wants her daughter back.

Amy’s life is a string of disappointments, but her biggest issue is her inability to connect with her daughter. And now she’s gone without a trace.

As Sarah and Emma avoid the nationwide hunt, they form an unshakeable bond. But her real mother is at home, waiting for her to return—and the longer the search for Emma continues, Amy is forced to question if she really wants her back.

Emotionally powerful and wire-taut, Not Her Daughter raises the question of what it means to be a mother—and how far someone will go to keep a child safe.

My Thoughts

This story really made me question things. In Not Her Daughter we met Sarah who on a chance meeting meets Emma and her mother Amy. Sarah sees Amy treating Emma harshly and wonders if this was just a tired mother or was it something more horrible. Then months later she sees Emma again and she becomes in a way obsessed. She decides to follow Emma and see if she is okay home wise and when she sees that Emma’s home life is far from perfect she decides to do something about it.

During the book, we get flashbacks and glimpses into Sarah’s life growing up. We see how her mother wasn’t the best and how she was gone most of the time until finally, she left her and her father. She claims that she doesn’t care about her mother and that she is fine but is she really? I felt she had these feelings that were never addressed and how she hates that her father still loves and defends her mother for leaving them. Do all these past actions have some input in her kidnapping Emma? Does she feel that she identifies with her by both of them having mothers that don’t love them?

Meanwhile, Amy, Emma’s mother is supposed to be grieving and upset about having her daughter out there somewhere but why isn’t she? Amy has her issues so she goes to see what her past lives were about if it has anything to do with how she feels, especially when it comes to her daughter. She knows it isn’t right how she feels and she knows people are starting to wonder if she did something to Emma but she isn’t so quick to want her daughter back.

Sarah and Emma are on the run and while Sarah tells herself she has reasons that made her kidnap Emma she knows she’s only getting deeper into trouble. However, she tries to reason with herself that she did the right thing by taking Emma because she sees how much better Emma is without her mom and how clearly Emma doesn’t miss home either. The ending was the killer for me, we see Sarah wanting to make the right decision and how Emma feels with this about but when we see Amy’s reaction it made my jaw drop.

My feelings when I was done went back and forth, I did see where both Sarah and Amy stood. While both were so different than how I would ever handle it when it came down to it, in the end, it was all about Emma and what was best for her. This is a novel that will have you debating about this long after you close the book. It will touch your heart and make you really think who is the real monster in this tale. This is one great book and I highly recommend to everyone.