The Liar's Daughter

The Liar's Daughter by Claire Allan

Published by Avon Books

February 2020

No one deserves to be taken before their time. Do they?

Joe McKee – pillar of the Derry community – is dead. As arrangements are made for the traditional Irish wake, friends and family are left reeling at how cancer could have taken this much-loved man so soon.

But grief is the last thing that Joe’s daughter Ciara and step-daughter Heidi feel. For they knew the real Joe – the man who was supposed to protect them and did anything but.

As the mourners gather, the police do too, with doubt being cast over whether Joe’s death was due to natural causes. Because the lies that Joe told won’t be taken to the grave after all – and the truth gives his daughters the best possible motive for killing him…

The Liar's Daughter starts with a dying man.  Joe McKee hasn't been given long to live from his cancer diagnosis by doctors and is taken home to be cared for, rather unwillingly by his step-daughter Heidi.  From the very beginning though, you can tell that there isn't much love lost between the two of them, though it's clear from what everyone else thinks that he is a 'good man' who has spent his life raising Heidi as his own.  As the book progresses we meet Ciara, Joe's daughter from his first marriage, the one he left to begin a new relationship with Heidi's mum.  There is definitely no love lost between the two women though and even when faced with Joe's imminent demise, the two cannot forge a bond.

With everyone in the house looking after Joe in his final hours, it isn't long until he passes away and the family can start to move on; that is until the body is examined post-mortem and it turns out that Joe didn't die of natural causes after all.  Suddenly everyone is a suspect: his cold and seemingly unloving step-daughter Heidi, his own daughter Ciara, who has never forgiven him for abandoning her as a teenager, Heidi's husband Alex who is learning more about his wife's childhood the longer he is in her family home and Joe's sister Kathleen who has come all the way over from England to be with him during his last days.  Which of these, if any of them, would have killed this sick man who only had a short amount of time left to live, and more importantly, why?

Finger soon start being pointed with Ciara blaming Heidi and threatening to go to the police to tell them what she thinks is the truth.  Suddenly both women are having to face truths both of them put to one side over a decade ago and it might be that they aren't the only ones with secrets to protect.

This is an interesting book in examining family relationships though it does contain aspects that may trigger some readers.  An interesting twist at the end that I didn't see coming!

Happy Reading

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