The Beautiful Daughters by Nicole Baart ~ A Review

Is what we remember and believe to be the truth in a tragic occurrence really truth or how we perceived it and want to believe?

 This is a story of 5 college friends, Adri who is a conservative young woman and her brother, Will, who were raised by their Christian father, Harper who is the wild child of the group, David who is son of very well to do parents who live in a castle-like mansion in town and for whom there is lots of expectations, and Jackson who is rarely mentioned. Adri has become a nurse and has moved to Africa to work with a charity but is called home after the death of the mansion's matriarch has made her an heir. We soon find out that Adri had been engaged to David and had actually fled to Africa following the death of her fiance and the story then starts to backtrack through Adri and Harper's viewpoints to the time of their college days where they met until the present where they both come back to the place they both swore they would never return to. Adri has not seen or talked to Harper since David's death even though they had been the best of friends in college so there is an air of mystery about that and what had actually happened to David. As the story unfolds there are sad and shocking revelations that play on the reader's emotions as and build up to why Adri and Harper no longer have contact. As they are forced to face their past they are also forced to face their guilt in the tragedy that caused them to go their separate ways.

 I usually love Nicole Baart's stories. Her writing is really good but I have to say this is definitely not my favourite of her books. I found I was just making myself finish the book because I usually do like this author's writing and I wanted to see what she would do with the characters not because I was loving the story or the characters involved. There were moments my attention was totally grabbed and then it would back off and I'd chug along until the next moment that it grabbed me. I didn't really engage or connect with either of the main characters unfortunately and I can't really state why. I found the ending did not reward me like I thought it would which is what I was hoping for in my determination not to put the book down. All that said, just because this particular story was not my cup of tea, I would still read the next book by this author.

I gave this book a 7.5/10

 Reading Challenge Goals Met: A book set somewhere I've always wanted to visit (Georgia), A book published this year, a book by a favourite author I haven't read yet, a book by a female author

Linked with Semicolon Saturday Review of Books