Book Review: "Daisy Darker" by Alice Feeney

I stayed in Manchester for a couple of days and honestly, the same as always, I was getting frustrated over the fact that I couldn't sleep. I wanted to sleep but it was so noisy and the conditions for sleep were horrible. I got up, it was just after midnight and I went to the kitchen to read my book by the spotlights. I was thinking about reading maybe about 150 to 200 pages, but I ended up reading the entire book. It was admittedly one of those paperback crime novels, but it had a strange twist to it that I will not reveal here.

“Life is a performance, and we don’t all like the scripts we’re given; sometimes it’s best to write your own.” - Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

The Darker family are having a family reunion at the birthday of the matriarch of the household. She lives on a remote Eel Marsh-style island with a causeway and everything that tells you that this is not going to go well. When the water comes over the causeway and the tide comes in, this dysfunctional family will be trapped together until the next morning. That's the downward-spiral father, the narcissistic mother, the terrible and terrifying sisters, the beaurocratic grandmother and a teenager who is constantly despondent. One by one, they are all going to have to admit something and face the demon of the past. There has been a death in the family.

I liked the way this book presented the theme of secrecy because you knew that everyone was aware of something for a long time, but you didn't know whether everyone was aware of the same thing and as you start to piece together all of the information, it just becomes worse and worse. There are constant reminders of the past in chapters that refer back to the 1980s where the sisters are still quite young and there is jealousy trampling about through everyone. The ultimate reveal was done very well and completely matched the character profiles we were presented with at the beginning of the book. From beginning to end, this book pulls out all of its Agatha Christie-styled stops to ensure you never really know everything until the very last page.

Another thing I enjoyed about this novel was the broken narrative. You start out in the present and you are constantly thrown back to episodes of the past. To make sure you don't realise everything too quickly, the episodes from the past come in small chunks as are the 'video tapes' in which some really strange and dark things take place - some of them are even pretty violent. I won't go into too much detail because it will give away some of the better parts of the story's realisation. But, if you wanted any evidence for the characters behaving the way they do with their reasons for doing so - then those tapes are the one thing you want to focus on.

The final thing I enjoyed was the change in opinion that you have about the characters as you go through. Initially, you decide who you like and who you don't but as the story goes on, that completely shifts and then, by the end that changes yet again. It is one of those stories where nobody is really the good guy - instead everyone has faults but some faults are not as manageable as others. When you realise the 'great ending' - you start to connect the beginning to the end and see what exactly you missed.

I was completely won over by the writing style. Littered with poetry that reads like a children's nursery rhyme, this book gets pretty dark and scary in places. Less like a psychological thriller and more like a horror text - the note at the start of the novel prepares you for a thrilling exposure of a family who have tried covering up terrible things for decades. Alice Feeney's Daisy Darker is a strange but wild mix of dysfunctionality, secrecy, truths in all of their forms and the way in which this family basically stuck together in the one way they were not supposed to. Oh and if you think death was the big reveal, then think again because it isn't. You literally will not see it coming until you finally see it.