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Book Review: Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney
When Daisy and her family go to her grandmother’s island home for her 80th birthday, they’re surprised when the family members start dropping dead, one an hour. Who has it in for the Darker family?
Summary:
After years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in Nana’s crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. Finally back together one last time, when the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours.
The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. Then at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows…
Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide comes in and all is revealed.
Review:
*This review is going to contain many spoilers for the twists in Daisy Darker. If you do not wish to be spoiled, please click away!*
This book is a send-up to the Agatha Christie classic And Then There Were None without the ties to the hideously racist children’s counting rhyme and minstrel song (note that link reveals the original racist language used in Agatha Christie’s). The similarities are clear: people are invited to an island where they then start dying off one by one. But if you are familiar with that book then one of the big plot twists in this one will not be a plot twist to you – the majority of the people invited to this island are responsible either for murder or for covering it up. Rather than using a pre-existing nursery rhyme, this book uses a brand-new poem written in the style of a nursery rhyme to predict the deaths of the characters. Another similarity includes the use of a red herring to deflect suspicion from the real person (or in this case, people) orchestrating the deaths. A big difference here, though, is that this a family drama. It’s not seemingly disconnected strangers. They are a family with…problems.
This is what I thought the twist was going to be: it was Conor’s dad who had faked his own death previously to get away from the Darker family. So I really wasn’t expecting the simultaneous reveal of Trixie holding the smoking gun while telling Aunt Daisy that she’s a ghost. I felt like I’d been Sixth Sensed all over again. Then the backstory of how Daisy was killed is revealed, and I realized…this book is And Then There Were None crossed with The Sixth Sense crossed with I Know What You Did Last Summer.
I’ve been wrestling with why I felt, as I said in my immediate quick GoodReads review, bamboozled by this book. I went back and checked a few key scenes to make sure it was possible for Daisy to have been a ghostly presence. For example: the reading of the will. But she inherited something! I thought. No, Nana just mentioned donating to some of Daisy’s favorite charities. So, in all the scenes I thought of, it was possible for Daisy to be a ghost. This was well done narratively. So why did I feel so bamboozled? I think for me it came down to this: this is told in the first-person from Daisy’s perspective, and it all hangs on her not remembering she’s a ghost. (This is a lot like The Sixth Sense). We’re supposed to believe she doesn’t remember she’s a ghost because the level of trauma from how she died is too hard to bare so she blocks it out, and she’s always been isolated so it’s not strange to her that people don’t talk to her or notice her. Ok, fine, but where does she live? She thinks she’s an adult who pops over to take care of Trixie routinely when she’s not volunteering in an elder care facility. Where is she when she’s not with Trixie? Does she just drop off the face of the planet? Wouldn’t she realize she never goes home? That she has nowhere to call home whatsoever?
The other thing is that the character of Conor I feel acts incredibly out of character for who he’s been presented to be the night of the I Know What You Did Last Summer incident. He has been shown to be a kind boy who is madly in love with Rose. But he sleeps with Lily then convinces everyone to throw Daisy into the ocean to save his future. Whereas Rose going along with what everyone else suggested without protesting too much and Lily being fine with it made sense to me because they both bullied their little sister, Conor being the instigator did not. For me, I needed more evidence of the fact he would be capable of such a thing from the very many home movies the crew watched over the course of the night. He was in them, but there was no sign of this selfish, mean, self-preservation streak whatsoever. In fact, the only time he sort of lied was when he didn’t want to admit to Nancy that he got beat up at school because he got into a fistfight trying to defend Lily’s honor. (This also further demonstrates how strange it is that he slept with Lily that same night.)
My other issue is that I get the vibe we’re supposed to like Nana, but I don’t. In fact, I think she has far more culpability than the narrative wants us to feel. She’s the matriarch of this atrocious family. She absolutely favored one of the Darker girls over the others. I think we’re supposed to think that’s fair and justified since Nancy favored Rose and Lily over Daisy but that’s not how it works. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Favoring one child over others creates a hateful environment for them all. The bullying of Daisy from Rose and Lily, and Daisy’s secret attacks back at them could have been worked on if any one adult stepped in and tried to do so. Nana knew what was going on and didn’t do anything about it. She just allowed Daisy to get her revenge. I do get it that part of the point of the book is this is a terrible family but I also think we’re supposed to see Nana in a positive light. But the terribleness must have started somewhere. Similarly, even though I felt sympathy for Daisy in flashbacks, in the moment (when I thought she was a grown-up and not a ghost), she seemed overwrought, dramatic, and annoyed me. I’m also confused about what she thinks she did wrong to Conor that warrants her needing to apologize.
Overall, I found this book to be a good thriller. I think it could have moved into great thriller territory with characters acting more within character (or better explained out of character behavior) and a ghost who knows she’s a ghost. In all honesty, I could have really gotten behind a story where Daisy shows up on Halloween night when the space between worlds is thin and watches as her family starts to drop dead while discovering her niece can speak to her. I don’t think the extra twist of finding out she’s a ghost was actually necessary.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 352 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: Library
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
Series Review: The Georgina Kincaid Series by Richelle Mead
Introduction:
I post series reviews after completing reading an entire series of books. It gives me a chance to reflect on and analyze the series as a whole. These series reviews are designed to also be useful for people who: A) have read the series too and would like to read other thoughts on it or discuss it with others OR B) have not read the series yet but would like a full idea of what the series is like, including possible spoilers, prior to reading it themselves or buying it for another. Please be aware that series reviews necessarily contain some spoilers.
Summary:
Georgina Kincaid loves her job managing a bookstore in Seattle. She’s not so sure about her job as Seattle’s only succubus, but she doesn’t have much choice about that one since she sold her soul to Hell back when she was mortal in ancient Greece. After hundreds of years of being a succubus, Georgina has started to feel guilty about stealing the life energy of good-souled men. So she’s switched to stealing the less high-quality life energy of bad-souled men. Her demon boss, Jerome, is none too happy about this. Things take an even more interesting turn when famous author, Seth Mortensen, moves to Seattle and chooses Georgina’s bookstore as his base of operations. Georgina quickly finds herself falling for him. Her first time falling for a man since WWII. Nobody seems to like the idea of Georgina dating Seth, except for Seth, but Georgina doesn’t have much time to wonder why as supernatural life carries on. Everything from an incubus plot to attempts at overthrowing her demonic boss (by another demon of course) to an escaped ancient supernatural power who feeds on dreams come Georgina’s way. Georgina starts to notice that Seattle seems to be facing more than the normal level of supernatural upheaval, and she starts to wonder why.
Review:
A tightly told, sexy, humorous series featuring an overarching plot that ties into all of the smaller plots and lends the series as a whole a greater meaning makes this urban fantasy stand out above the rest.
The series ostensibly focuses on the bad guys of the supernatural world, not something that is seen very often in urban fantasy. Yes, Georgina is a succubus with a guilt complex, but she is still a succubus, and she still goes out and does her succubus thing. She is not out trying to save the world. She’s just trying to get by day by day in the role she has chosen for herself–fighting on the bad guy side of the battle. But Mead does not let the series fall easily into clear good versus evil. It soon becomes evident that good guys can be on the bad guy side and bad guys on the good guy side. In most cases, one decision or the fault of birth decides where they land. Just because someone is a vampire doesn’t mean he can’t desire to help out his friends. Just because someone is an angel doesn’t mean they can’t make mistakes. And the rules aren’t always fair and sometimes incomprehensible. This gray complexity lends a lot of interesting notes to the series that otherwise wouldn’t be there, not least of 
which is the fact that the characters are able to be three-dimensional in this world Mead has created.
The characters, even the minor ones, are indeed three-dimensional. They sometimes make stupid choices, big mistakes, and are annoying. But they also make tough good choices, ones that aren’t easy but still happen. They fall in genuine love. They accidentally hurt each other but also sacrifice themselves for each other. They worry about having a bad hair day. They cry. They have great sex and bad sex. And they come to life in the reader’s mind.
The sex scenes, a key element of an urban fantasy series about a succubus, are never repetitive. They are tantalizing and sexy, except for a few which are aiming to show that sex can be bad. They range from the intense love making of a couple madly in love to a fun night out having sex in public at a public sex bar. And many positions and types of sex are covered as well. The sex scenes walk the line between barely mentioned and extremely explicit quite well. They are fully fleshed-out sex scenes without being extremely explicit.
The overarching plot, though, is what really made me fall in love with the series. Georgina became a succubus in exchange for her husband and all those who knew her forgetting all about her. She cheated on her husband, and she felt so much guilt at both the act and the pain it caused that she felt this was the best solution. At first, she goes into being a succubus with enthusiasm but over time her feelings change. Her hurt starts to heal, and she begins to see the good side of both humanity and life. She is in the throes of this complex situation of wanting to be good but having already signed a contract for the bad side of the fight when Seth shows up and everything starts going haywire in the supernatural world in Seattle. Eventually, she finds out that Seth is the reincarnation of her original husband, Kiriakos. He lived his life thinking he must have a soul mate but never meeting her, so when he died he struck a bargain to get more chances at meeting her. He has a limited number of reincarnations (10, I believe), that will occur in the same vicinity as his soul mate. His soul mate is Georgina, and she has met him multiple times throughout her life as as a succubus. This reincarnation as Seth is his last chance. From here, the story takes a hard look at what makes people soul mates, that being soul mates doesn’t mean no mistakes will be made, that love 
and a relationship aren’t an easy cakewalk and sacrifices and compromises must be made. It delves into the idea of redemption, and that being a good person and having a good life aren’t just something innate in you. It’s a beautiful love story, spanning many centuries, that takes a hard look at what makes relationships work. It also ties in nicely with the questions established earlier about good versus evil and if being good or evil is a one-time choice or something that happens over time. I never would have guessed that I could end up feeling so positively about a love story that begins with betrayal but that’s where Mead uses the supernatural with great skill. The story works because the betrayal is treated so seriously. Georgina’s betrayal of her husband (and soul mate) leads them both to centuries of pain. It is not something that can be just brushed off. It’s a mistake she made, yes, but just because it was a mistake doesn’t mean she can just say sorry and make it all right. On that note, Kiriakos/Seth also made mistakes when they were first together that he also has to work through. They both learn through time that you can’t just sit back and let the marriage happen. You have to pay attention, invest, and work at growing together.
The fun setting, tantalizing sex scenes, three-dimensional characters, and unexpected yet beautiful overarching plot about the nature of good and evil and love and redemption makes this series a stunner in urban fantasy. Highly recommended to urban fantasy and romance fans alike, although those who are irritated at the concept of soul mates might not enjoy it as much.
4.5 out of 5 stars
Source: PaperBackSwap, library, gift, Audible
Books in Series:
Succubus Blues
Succubus On Top
Succubus Dreams
Succubus Heat
Succubus Shadows
Succubus Revealed
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Opinions of a Wolf 