Like Mother, Like Daughter
Like Mother, Like Daughter
By: Kimberly McCreight
[Fulfilled ‘A book about a missing parent’ prompt as part of Shelf Reflection’s 2025 Reading Challenge]
“I did what I do best: I made the problem go away.”
I’d been putting this one off for no apparent reason and I finally pushed myself to read it and I’m glad I did!
This was a good thriller, but would have been better with less swearing. I definitely figured out aspects of it but not everything. McCreight did a good job of putting out new evidence or suspects to think about that make you forget about your previous theories. There were a couple surprises!
This is one of those books that has a lot of elements in the writing to present different angles of the conflict where it could feel a bit jumbled.
My opinion of the book largely weighed on how the ending would go— can all these things work together? If the ending would have been unsatisfactory all of those extra elements would have felt distracting and cumbersome, but since I thought the ending went really well, those elements were pulled together in a way that made sense.
I agree with another reviewer that it would be better not to read the full Goodreads summary before reading the book. So here’s the basic plot:
Cleo, a college student, arrives home to find food burning in the oven, blood on the floor, and her mother missing without a trace. The pair had become estranged as Cleo felt her mom, Katrina— who was a corporate lawyer and ‘fixer’, was overbearing and controlling. As Cleo unravels the puzzle of her mother’s life and past, she realizes there was a reason for her mother’s ‘madness.’
“I never saw my mom as a full person separate from me. And now that she’s a person who’s missing, I may never have the chance.”
The book contains ‘present’ chapters from Cleo’s POV— titled by the number of hours her mom had been missing, ‘past’ chapters from Katrina’s POV— titled by the number of days before she disappeared, excerpts from court documents from a case her mother was working, text conversations between a couple unknown people, excerpts from therapy sessions Cleo went to, diary entries from Katrina’s childhood, and a few newspaper and Reddit articles.
The main characters aren’t particularly likeable, but McCreight puts a lot of effort into drawing you in and becoming invested in their story because of their strained relationship. You feel the burden of a mother trying to connect with her daughter, doing everything she can to help her daughter and wanting what’s best for her. You also feel Cleo’s teenage (aka ignorant) resistance to that control and her gradual realization that her mother does care for her and her flaws come from a place of pain that she didn’t know about.
You see where things went wrong and you really want Cleo to find her mom alive so they can become reconciled. As a mom, it’s one of my fears that my kids will grow up and make bad choices or not want to be around me or care what I think about anything so I tended to feel more empathy for Katrina.
I just don’t understand the whole ‘I don’t like how my mom treats me so I’m going to go do the worst things and deal drugs just to piss her off’ kind of thing. Why is this a good idea?! And if you know it’s not, why don’t you care?!
I was glad to see that Cleo wasn’t so stubborn that she would be completely oblivious to the truths she discovered. And even though she made a few questionable choices in her investigation, I’m glad she wasn’t so stupid as to completely leave the police out of everything.
“I try not to squirm under the weight of her stare, knowing I need to come clean. It’s not too late to start telling the actual truth for once in my whole stupid life.”
The title insinuates that the mother and daughter are the same in some way. Their differences are made clear from the start:
Katrina: “I was excellent at doing. I wasn’t so good at feeling.”
Cleo: “I love messy things. I am a messy thing. Messy and confused and irrational and overemotional. But at least I feel things. I feel everything.”
But as the story continues you realize they have some things in common.
This might be a bit of a spoiler so don’t read this sentence if that might bother you, but once we found out what Katrina did in her past I did wonder why she was so worried about people finding out about it. Considering the circumstances, I don’t think she’d be going to jail. As a kid I can see why you might think that, but now as an adult and a lawyer, seems like she would realize that her culpability has some pretty big caveats to it.
Last thing- unless I missed something, I would like to know how the money squabble ended. Did she ever get her money back? That probably should have been included in the Epilogue…
Recommendation
I did enjoy this thriller a lot and read it pretty quickly. Because of all the swearing, I’m not sure if I will read more of hers, but for some reason the swearing didn’t feel as jarring in this context as it has in others. I’m not sure why, but that’s just my initial reflection after reading it.
I always enjoy a thriller that I can’t completely figure out, at least right away.
If you can handle the swearing, I would definitely recommend. If you try to avoid swearing, then this may not be the right book for you, but I’ll let you decide. I’ve definitely read books worse than this in that department but everyone has their own convictions.
[Content Advisory: 65 f-words, 41 s-words, 8 b-words; rape; talk of an affair; a couple very brief sex scenes]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
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