"I listened to this on audiobook, and it was engaging and interesting from beginning to end (2O hours later).

I’m not sure if I’d heard of Mike when he was still alive. What got me interested in reading this book was when I read about his death and how he’d been a director of so many movies I’d enjoyed. I’m interested in the film industry, but I also learned a lot about what it takes to get a show on Broadway as well as movies made.

The number of celebrities that orbited Mike was extraordinary. He loved working with Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Tom Hanks, Candice Bergen, Emma Thompson, Annette Bening, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Lorne Michaels. He worked with Robin Williams and Nathan Lane on The Birdcage, and Mathew Broderick on other projects. It was interesting reading about the insecurities and addictions plaguing the pretty people you see on talk shows promoting their films. This was so well done. Highly recommend."

Juan Pablo is on page 260 of 641 of The Good Daughter: I read like a fucking slothhhhhhhhhh

"3 or 3.5. It took me a while to decide on a rating as there were aspects that I really enjoyed AND disliked about this novel.

What I enjoyed

• The unique premise and protagonist, I love an anti-hero as being in their point of view is so fascinating and different!! Gretchen was not too crazy considering she can function within society but enough nuances to make me interested in her.

• The dual point of view and timeline, I have both positives and negatives in the way it was done. I love it when stories start off with a bang and then slowly go back into the past to unravel the crime.
I also enjoyed how the current timeline would then be followed by the corresponding past event so it was like revealing the other puzzle piece.

• The interactions between Viola and Gretchen. Psychopath vs sociopath, I love it! I just wish there was more!

What I didn’t enjoy

• The non chronological order of Reed’s timeline. It was different but I didn’t like it because it felt messy, there was too much jumping to the past and future. Rather than show past events leading up to the death...It went the opposite way and in a random order towards a different case which was confusing and disappointing because I was more interested in Violet.

• The loose ends of the past. Considering how much focus and build up of mystery there was around the past, I was waiting for a jaw dropping revelation that never came. (view spoiler)[(Tess’ disappearance and death was glossed over) (hide spoiler)].

• The fact that Gretchen calls other people empaths. I didn’t mind it the first few times but it got irritating. Sometimes it felt like the use of the word sociopath and empaths was the biggest reminder that Gretchen was in fact a sociopath.

Theme and the missed potential!
(view spoiler)[
• This was my first time seeing a book where the husband is a victim of domestic violence. It lightly touched on the issues of men being abused and the stigma that it has:

“Men who were abused by women were never taken seriously. He would become the butt of their jokes�

• Upon reflection, I feel it was a missed opportunity to focus on domestic violence and an incredibly complex family where the mother and daughter were abusive psychopaths and the husband and boys were the victims. How crazy is that! Instead the focus was on the relationship between Tess, Reed and Claire. As I didn’t get deep insights into the family and I wasn’t emotionally invested, the revelation was anticlimactic and I didn’t feel anything for the man who gave his life for his son.
(hide spoiler)]

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