In Kimberly McCreight's Like Mother, Like Daughter, we meet Kat whose life is full of secrets and complications. Kat is a fixer at a New York law firm, but her husband, Aidan, and teenage daughter, Cleo, have no idea she's anything other than a routine, boring corporate lawyer. She and Aidan are currently separated, another secret she's keeping from Cleo, and she's beginning to date for the first time in decades. She's trying to mend her broken relationship with Cleo, knowing that if her daughter had any idea that she had stepped in to strongarm Cleo's drug dealer boyfriend and get him to break up with her, any hope of reconciliation would be gone. To make it even worse, she's been following Cleo to make sure she's staying away from her ex.
Kat thinks she may have found someone in Doug, who unfortunately works for one of her clients, a secret she has to keep from her boss. Doug shares that he is being blackmailed with Kat just before he is killed in a car accident. But was it an accident?
On top of a stressful career and a litany of secrets, Aidan is pressuring Kat for money, and since he knows details of the biggest secret Kat is keeping from her past, she's worried he may use it to pressure her into paying. Then Kat, too, begins to receive blackmail threats that could destroy her house of cards and leave Cleo as a victim.
Kat convinces Cleo to come home to dinner, but when Cleo arrives, the door is unlocked, there are signs of a struggle, and Kat is missing. What follows are alternating chapters told from Kat's perspective leading up to the day of her disappearance and from Cleo's perspective after she arrives at the house as she searches for Kat and uncovers the secrets that make her realize that they are more alike than she ever imagined.
As with most thrillers, there are some formulaic elements here that make the plot predictable, but McCreight does a very good job keeping the alternating chapters and points of view clear. Overall a good read and highly recommended.
ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
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