Daisy Darker

Daisy Darker and her family arrive at Nana’s crumbling island home before the tide rises, just in time to celebrate her 80th birthday. Each family member arrives with a secret or two, each hoping to be named in Nana’s will. Once the tide is in, the family is cut off from the mainland for eight hours - and everyone is counting down to leave after a disappointing speech from Nana.
At midnight, Nana is found dead.
The next hour, another family member follows.
Trapped in the gothic home filled with chiming clocks and family secrets, Daisy and the remaining Darker clan must deal with the present dangers while revealing their past secrets before the tide goes out.
I adored this book! There are wonderful twists with a great wink to Agatha show more Christie; a fresh domestic thriller mixed with a locked room mystery. show less

Daisy Darker’s whole family is finally coming together. They are all headed to the Cornish Coast to stay at Sea Glass. Sea Glass is Daisy’s grandmother’s home. Daisy and her sisters spent a lot of time here growing up. She is hoping fences will be mended and all will be well. But, when the tide comes in and they are all trapped for 8 hours, people start dying and then the secrets start to come to light!

Y’ALL! I loved this book! The creepy house on a cliff, the horrible family members and all the secrets set a stage for a huge family drama! I felt like I was in the middle of a clue game with a candlestick!

This book is so well written and so dang sneaky! When the twist started to happen…and yes it kind of happened in sections, I show more almost had to pull my car over and catch my breath. Then, there are so many phrases that resonated with me because the characters are so good! And for me to catch that in an audiobook…KUDOS TO ALICE FENNEY!

This narrator, Stephanie Racine, IS AMAZING! I looked through all her books and I am not sure if I have listened to her before. She is now my top narrator of all time!

Need a story which is has a twist you won’t believe…THIS IS IT! Run! Don’t walk! Get this today!

I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review. show less

At the family gathering to hear Nana’s plans for her will, she surprised everyone. They were meeting at the family home called Seaglass on an island, cut off until the tide changed, a perfect set up for murder. And then they were bumped off, one at a time, as their secrets are revealed, offering shades of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. I’ve never been attracted to retellings, but Feeney’s book had me enthralled. I thought I had the mystery solved but in the end I was wrong.

This is going back on the shelf to revisit when the details begin to fade in my memory. It’s worth a second reading.

"Pity fades with age, hate is lost and found, but guilt can last a lifetime."

I recently have reentered my thriller era and I kept hearing great things about Alice Feeney. So I had no choice but to read Daisy Darker and boy it did not disappoint. It has like this perfect balance of creepy and ominous but also real world problems. I mean from the moment the book started I began to question everything. I constantly thought I had it figured out but I did not expect the plot twists that Alice Feeney created in this one. Usually I've figured out the whole thriller pretty earlier on, I only got one piece of this one, and even then I thought I was wrong. I mean the writing is phenomenal, the psychological elmements of the family being show more tormented by the killler were beautiful. I loved that after each kill a VHS tape was left for the family to watch.

What begins to become clear is Daisy's family has a lot of secrets and none of them really treated her all that well. Yet, she loves her family so she tries and tries to fit in. Her nana is the only person she ever truly connected with, until her niece came along. It is heartbreaking to get the bits of Daisy's childhood. You quickly empathize with her character and want some type of retribution. So this family get together seems like the perfect opportunity for Daisy to try and set things right. We quickly learn that the family has a vast number of secrets that they hide from each other, and the killer has no issue bringing them to light. I really enjoyed this book. It was one that I hated to put down because something was always happening or on the verge of happening. I have offically been converted to an Alice Feeney fan and can't wait to read more of her work. show less

"I think most murder mysteries are overrated," Nana says. "There are much cleverer ways to end a person than killing them."

I'm always a little nervous about re-tellings, especially ones I love so much. But this one was well crafted, with deliciously awful characters and a house and atmosphere that were almost characters themselves. The twists kept me guessing, even if I had my suspictions, and the end reveal was so fun to revel in. I loved it!

Daisy Darker is the first book I’ve read by Alice Feeney, and I will definitely be hunting down her backlist!

The trope of the old Gothic house with a storm going on outside and no one can leave for hours has been done numerous times, but Feeney makes it into her own. The descriptive writing of the house is gorgeous, her characters are well-formed, and her writing on family and relationships is at times pretty deep and philosophical. All of this combined, made for a story that I couldn’t put down.

As I went along for the ride and people kept dying I really couldn’t figure out who was the killer. I changed my mind a few times, and at one point thought I had it, but it wasn’t quite right. When the final reveal happened I was very show more happy and amused. It all made sense and I think reading it a second time would be even more fun because you would be looking at everything in a different light.

Kind of spoilers…. So stop reading this review if you don’t want any!!!

I don’t normally give spoilers in my reviews, but I have to share this insight with someone… and it’s not a full on spoiler.

There was a touch of I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Sixth Sense, and Agatha Christie’s Crooked House and And Then There Were None all swirled up into Daisy Darker, which I am still thinking about and am amused by several days after finishing the book. show less

I wanted to like this. The idea of a dysfunctional family cut off from the world on a tidal island the night before Halloween deserves better. I was hoping for a different take on And Then There Were None, but this didn't work for me.
I knew the twist was coming and was hoping for something good cause the buildup was okayish. However, the big twist was foreshadowed from the start and felt like an easy way out, so I was disappointed. The little twists and family secrets were predictable. None of the characters were likeable or interesting and the heaviness of what they did was too much for the superficial level of character treatment they got in the novel. It just felt all out of balance with such a heavy topic at heart.
2.5 stars.