"I've read all of Paula Daly's books - they're addicting page turners - and I was eager to read her latest - The Trophy Child. And yes, it was another fantastic read!

There are always difficulties in blended families. But the Bloom family is truly struggling. Father Noel is spending more and more time at work (and in a bottle) as he doesn't want to deal with the home situation. Verity is Noel's daughter, living with her father and her stepmother Karen not by choice, but because she has nowhere else to go. Ewan is Karen's son from her first marriage. He's happily stoned most of the time, living over the garage. The one thing that binds them is Bronte - the ten year old daughter of Karen and Noel. And then Bronte goes missing......

After Bronte's disappearance, Daly caught me completely off guard with the turn her plot took. I adore not being able to predict where a plot is going to lead - and Daly definitely kept me off kilter.And she provides us with lots of suspects for the whodunit. For for those of you who love psychological suspense as much as I do, there is a twist at the end.

There is so much going on behind the scenes here. Each of the family has secrets. But the character who had me spitting mad was Karen. She's a vitriolic tyrant. And she takes 'Tiger Mom' to a whole new level, scheduling every minute of Bronte's life, demanding perfection. Honestly, some (okay most) of her dialogue was off the charts. It was very easy to hate this character.

Karen's attitude is a current social commentary....."British parents, though they wouldn't admit it, were sneakily adopting the Chinese model of parenting, whereby anything less than an 'A' was considered a failure. They meant that a balanced childhood was okay for someone else's child. Not theirs."

The one I felt the most for was Verity. She is caught in this dysfunctional family, tormented by Karen. Each player is fleshed out with very distinct personalities. They're not all pretty and there was more than one character I was on the fence about. One of those was the DS Joanne Aspinall (last seen in Just What Kind of Mother Are You) who is investigating the Bloom case. But I was quite taken by her partner DS Oliver Black - he seems to be one of the few characters who has no baggage or ulterior motives. But, I found my empathy and sympathy changed with each new chapter and revelation.

But what I'm not on the fence about is how much I enjoyed this latest from Daly! Definitely recommended!

This is one of the craziest books I've ever read. Paula Daly has already made a name for herself by writing these mystery/thrillers that follow a formula that I'm obsessed with. All of the characters are multi-faceted (often times unlikeable), and the plot always has a few twists.  From the premise of this novel, I thought this book was going to be a standard mystery/psychological thriller, but it was so much better than I was expecting.

Every character in this book is extremely well-written and well thought out. All of them are so deeply flawed that there really aren't any good or bad characters. They're all dealing with their own issues and trying to find a place in their family where their main goal is to not disappoint each other. Paula Daly writes the complexity and the problems of a blended family really well. She forces the reader to examine the typical idea of what a family is, and also the many ways a mother can love her child. Even though Karen is a typical "tiger mom", these mothers love their children and want them to be successful and they show it in a slightly different manner. There's so much competition between mothers that perhaps they end up showing their love inappropriately. I tried to understand this side of Karen, and a part of me could do so, but it was really hard to like her. It was hard to like any character fully because they all acted selfishly. That was the beauty of the characters though.

The plot was so fast-paced and intriguing that it was almost impossible to stop reading. I thought I knew exactly what this story was going to be about, but there were so many twists and curveballs that the plot was completely different than what I thought it would be. I really liked the whole investigation aspect and how everyone was a suspect, but I was disappointed by the ending. I really hoped for a longer resolution and for the motives to be a little clearer. This is also a British novel so there were slight differences in how they ran their police investigation. Apparently, British police officers don't carry guns, which I find a little strange.

Overall, this was a nearly perfect mystery novel and I was so addicted to the plot and the wonderful characters. I'm so interested in all of Paula Daly's future books. She is definitely one of my new auto-buy authors.

Tiger mothers have nothing on Karen Bloom. Things may have not turned out so well with her son Ewan but she is definitely not letting her daughter Bronte slip through the cracks. Straight A’s, music lessons, and dance classes dominate the young prodigy’s life. Karen expects her family to always be at 200 percent and nothing less.

But behind the facade of the perfect family lies a wealth of secrets. Karen’s husband Noel, a successful small-town doctor has a taste for women and alcohol. Noel’s teenage daughter Verity is under strict discipline at school and at home due to her aggressive behaviour. And Bronte, the one on whom everything rests, longs to run away from it all.

When Bronte actually does go missing, a domino effect hits the family. As tragedy strikes the family again, all of their secrets and lies begin to spill out, leading readers to wonder how far people will go in their quest for perfection in The Trophy Child by Paula Daly.

After reading What Kind of Mother Are You, Paula Daly became an author whose books I will always pick up. I love a thriller and her books easily make their mark in a genre that is becoming increasingly popular. I also like how all of her novels are set in the Lake District of England. There is something about a small, close-knit community setting that makes these books even more interesting. 

This book caught my interest because of this whole notion of the perfect family. It seems that the advancement of social media has taken this idea of painting a picture of perfection to new heights. It’s no longer about keeping up with your neighbours, it’s about keeping up with people around the world. And if there is one thing we know about social media, it’s that not all is what it seems. It’s easy to paint a picture that doesn’t actually exist. And yet many people fall into this trap of illusions, just as Karen Bloom does in this book.

Paula Daly really knows how to write characters that will grab on to the reader. I felt so much emotion for the children in this book and so much anger toward Karen. The lack of emotion I felt toward the husband Noel also shows just how well Daly has created characters that feel real.

I think the title could have been different for this book. It leads one to think that the book is more about Bronte when it really is about Karen and what her quest for perfection has done to her family. Because of the title I was really wanting more of the emotional side of it all for Bronte. 

This book actually ended up being more of a picture of a dysfunctional family than actual thriller for me, which is okay, but I really didn’t read the book I thought I was going to. A good read, not my favourite of Daly’s, but a good commentary on the notion of perfection.