‘The Good Daughter’ is a Tragic Crime Story of What Loss and Evil Does to Loved Ones
This is by far Karin Slaughter’s best work. I was not expecting the story to leave me feeling so broken as I progressed through the journey of two sisters who endured horrible trauma at the hands of two men.
The story follows two sisters named Charlie and Sam Quinn, who fell apart after what they went through in their past. Charlie is currently close with her father, is stuck in a failing marriage with her husband, Ben, and is a bit of an asshole to everyone she runs into.
Charlie is working with her father, known as Rusty, who is a lawyer.
Sam Quinn is just as successful as Rusty with her own business as a lawyer, but even she isn’t happy with her life. She lost her husband to an illness, she has to use a cane to walk, and she her vision is a bit hazy, after what she went through as a child.
The sisters reunite when Rusty ends up injured. They work together to solve a current crime taking place, and are forced to confront their past of what they experienced as children.
The sisters suffered horribly when they were children at the hands of two men who murdered their mother in front of them.
Two men named Zach and Daniel, break into the home of Rusty, not expecting his family to be there. Their mother, Gamma, is shot and killed after she attempts to plead with them to not hurt her children.
Sam gets her eyelids literally ripped apart by Zach, and is shot in the head by Daniel when she attempts to escape. She is buried alive by Daniel, and miraculously, she survived it all.
Charlie is tortured by Zach, before Daniel interferes, leading to Charlie’s escape and survival. She runs into a woman named Judith Heller, who takes her into her home, where she cares for her until her father reunites with her.
The trauma the sisters experienced haunted them both for years, causing them to fall apart.
They reunite when they realize they need to work together to solve a mysterious case.
Charlie is caught in a school shooting when she goes to give back an item to a man named Mason Huckabee.
Mason is a teacher that she had a one-night stand with, cheating on her husband when she was having a bad day. Charlie and Mason are then caught in a school shooting taking place inside of the school.
A teacher and a kid are killed, and the teacher was the husband of Judith Heller. The murders are committed by a kid named Kelly Wilson, and she is immediately arrested for the crime, but the weapon mysteriously disappears.
Charlie and Sam are caught in a whirlwind of questions when they learn about this information, and they try to best to figure out what happened that day.
Rusty is then stabbed for attempting to defend Kelly Wilson, due to the hatred that the town has of him for convicting Zach and Daniel to prison.
Another loss takes place for the poor sisters.
Rusty passes away while Sam is speaking with him about the past.
This part shocked me, because I was not expecting Rusty to die. He was talking to Sam about their mother, and mentioned a photo that had been taken of her years ago, that meant the world to him.
I felt so sorry for Sam here, because while she was remembering her mother, she decided to buy him a father of the year mug as a joke for him. Unfortunately, when she was about to show him the gift, he was already gone.
Charlie and Sam attend his funeral, where Sam learns about what Charlie went through with Zach in the past. I struggled to get through this part of the book, Charlie was just a kid, a poor kid that wasn’t able to escape from that monster in the woods.
Sam tried her best to stay strong, when she realized that both of them suffered horribly all those years ago. She makes a vow to herself, to stay by Charlie’s side, no matter what.
Ben, Charlie’s husband, offers to take them both away from the funeral. They go to Rusty’s home, where they search for the image of their mother that Rusty had mentioned. At that moment, Mason decides to pay the family a visit. He admits that he was the one who took Kelly’s gun away from the scene, and he then asks if he could use the restroom.
The sisters then realize how did Mason know where the bathroom was, and then they hear Ben call out for Charlie in the house. Ben suddenly goes into a rage, beating the shit out of Mason. Charlie and Sam are in shock that Mason does not fight back once.
We then get an insane twist I did not see coming.
Mason was one of the men who broke into the Quinn family home on that day.
It turned out, that Daniel was never there. It was Mason and Zach that were there on that day. Mason was a young kid, who wanted revenge against Rusty, for getting his sister killed, due to trauma she experienced in the past. He tells the Quinn sisters that he didn’t mean for things to go that far.
The sisters had accidentally sent Daniel to prison. Mason had confessed to their father later on, but he could not imagine having his children relive what they went through, so he never turned Mason in.
The sisters both let everything out to Mason, calling him a monster, because he had the power to stop the evil that took place that night.
I was so freaking pissed off during this reveal, because Mason was just as evil as Zach, for allowing all of that to happen to the poor sisters, including the murder of their mother.
Mason leaves the property in fear, as the sisters force him to reveal what he did with Kelly’s gun. Then while the sisters are continuing their investigation, they learn that it was never Kelly behind the murders.
Judith Heller was the killer.
The woman who took Charlie into her home after her escape, was the one who killed her own husband and that poor child. She revealed to Charlie that she was angry at her husband for committing these evil acts against Kelly and other students, and she decided to kill him.
Her plan was to kill Kelly as well, to put her as the true killer. It didn’t work out that way, and Judith accidentally killed the kid. After confessing everything to Charlie, she reveals to her that she knows that she is being recorded. She tells Charlie to leave the home, because she was going to end her life.
Charlie pleads with her the whole time, but she gets locked out of the home. Charlie freaks out when she hears the single gunshot inside.
Despite all of the horrible things the sisters learned and having to relive their trauma, the sisters are able to move forward and get their happy ending.
Sam is now back home at her apartment, having a good relationship with her sister again. It’s revealed that Kelly won’t be going to prison for a long time, Mason will go to prison for withholding evidence from the authorities, and that Charlie and her husband are now in love again.
While Sam is on a phone call with Charlie, she tells her sister that she found something crazy on their father’s property. She hangs up to keep her sister in suspense, letting her know that she was going to receive an email.
Sam opens up the email on her phone, and is shocked to find the picture of her mother that Rusty told her about. Sam gets closure in the ending; happy she got to see a photo of her mother.
I literally started crying when I finished reading this novel.
This book was so tragic, and was freaking tough to get through in multiple scenes. But the evil was defeated at the end of the novel, proving that the sisters were strong to continue forward with their lives and be happy.
I have recently heard that there will be a TV show on this book, and it will finally begin filming in March of this year. I’m planning to check it out!
And for those who want to read this book, viewer discretion is strongly advised.
The Good Daughter is a powerful novel of trauma, loss, evil, but in the end, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.
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