This is new for me – writing book reviews.  But I am participating in NetGalley.com as an early reader of forthcoming novels, and the first book I read through the program was Jonathan Kellerman’s The Murderer’s Daughter, which will be out later in August.

I have not read a lot of Kellerman’s work, but was familiar with the Alex Delaware mystery series.  This was a stand-alone novel, although with a cameo tie-in to the author’s famous detective.  The Murderer’s Daughter tells the story of a successful psychotherapist with a disturbing past.   Grace Blades is an extremely talented young woman who survived the deaths of her drug-user parents, and navigated the foster care system until she found a family who was able to nurture her special talents.    The novel uses flash-backs, starting in the past, with her birth, and going back and forth from present day for most of the story, revealing to the reader, bit by bit, more of Grace’s back-story.

The author’s use of flash-backs could be seen as tired, but in this book it actually works quite well, as it ties in with the actual mystery that drives the book (which I won’t reveal, as it is too hard to not create a spoiler).

I am not convinced that the ending of the book was as good as it could be.  It felt in some ways like the author was running into a page limit, and wrapped it up a bit too quickly.   That said, I’d read a second book in the Grace Blade series, if it is a series.

4.2 / 5.