A tale of abduction/murder/disappearance? We the reader know not and so the tension and mystery builds. It is about a medical couple with three children, prosperous, hardworking, happy – so there is no way Naomi would want to run away. When she vanishes the worst is assumed, the police informed, the hunt is on but nothing comes to light and so the family falls apart. About a year later her mother begins to clear her room and we race into the final twist. Terrific.
When a teenage girl goes missing her mother discovers she doesn't know her daughter as well as she thought in Jane Shemilt's haunting debut novel, Daughter. 'I don't know why. I still don't know why we had to check. Did we really think you would be there, curled up and sleeping on the stage? That we could wake you and that you would smile and stretch, sleepy and stiff, with some explanation about taking too long to change? That we would put our arms round you, and take you home?' Naomi has vanished, leaving her family broken and her mother Jenny desperately searching for answers. But the traces fifteen year-old Naomi's left behind reveal a very different girl to the one Jenny thought she'd raised. And the more she looks the more she learns that everyone she trusted has been keeping secrets. Who is the real Naomi? And will discovering the truth help to find her? Daughter by Jane Shemilt is an emotional and compelling story about how well you really know those you love most.
Complex and baffling. Jane Shemilt builds layer upon layer of tension in a novel you won't be able to put down - TESS GERRITSEN
Author
About Jane Shemilt
While working as a GP, Jane Shemilt completed a postgraduate diploma in Creative Writing at Bristol University and went on to study for the MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa, gaining both with distinction. She was shortlisted for the Janklow and Nesbit award and the Lucy Cavendish fiction prize for Daughter, which is her first novel. She and her husband, a Professor of Neurosurgery, have five children and live in Bristol.
