Rea Frey does such an amazing job painting a picture of two separate lives. Not Her Daughter, a book based on a kidnapped little girl named Emma her mom Amy and the women who kidnapped her Sarah. I was hooked from the very beginning reading it in only 12 hours. I fell in love with this little girl watching her turn from a mink, shy broken child to a thriving, happy and loved kid. I did not want to like Sarah she kid napped this little girl and took her from her family! But a part of me really started to like her. As you read you find out the home Emma came from was not good. She was not loved or appreciate by her mother. Amy physically and verbally abused her daughter daily. Sarah takes her glues his broken girl back together.
There is so many emotions in this book so many questions. For instance, How can Amy as a mother treat her child like that? How can Sarah as a bystander make the call to take the child offering it a better life? You learn so much about each women throughout this book which in the end made me side with Sarah. Against everything in me that wanted to root for the Mom. I just could not picture that child going back to Amy.

This was an interesting read. It really makes you think about "crimes" and the mother/daughter relationship.

Omg! This has been the best book I have read all year!! I was 90% done and kept putting it down because I didn't want it to end!! I loved it!!! So descriptive it was like I could see All the characters completely!! Great book!!!

When a child is kidnapped, everyone wants the child to be found and safely brought home. But no one really stops to question if maybe the child is better off with the kidnapper than with the parents. In NOT HER DAUGHTER by Rea Frey (published August 21st 2018 by St. Martin’s Griffin), the readers will find themselves hoping that the kidnapper is never caught because this child is better off with her kidnapper than her parents.

Sarah Walker’s life is forever changed when she witnesses a five year old girl being verbally abused and bullied by her mother at the airport. It brings back memories of her own unhappy childhood, and her horrible relationship with her mother before her mother took off without a word. Sarah can’t forget the girl – or her desire to somehow help her – and she takes her second meeting with the child as fate. Sarah kidnaps Emma Grace Townsend with the intent to rescue her from her abusive mother and give her a new, happy life. Leaving her life and her business behind, Sarah takes Emma on a cross country journey as they evade the police who are determined to bring the little girl home to her parents.

Yes, what Sarah did is wrong. She kidnapped a child and took her away from her parents. But the parents were negligent and abusive. Emma’s young life was miserable. Sarah might be Emma’s kidnapper, but Sarah is also her savior. The readers will find themselves cheering for Sarah as she eludes the police and provides the little girl with a happy, abusive-free summer.

Amy Townsend was not cut out to be a mother, and she feels like a failure because she has been unable to bond with the little girl. To be honest, Amy feels like she has failed at everything in life. When Emma is kidnapped, Amy does what she can to help the police find her daughter. But, the longer Emma is gone, the more Amy comes to realize that she doesn’t want her daughter back. If Emma never comes back, Amy gets a second chance at life…

NOT HER DAUGHTER is an entrancing, emotional novel. I was pulled into the story and couldn’t put it down because I wanted – no, needed – to know what happened next. Frey splits the novel between Sarah’s first-person narrative and Amy’s third-person narrative, giving the reader both sides of the story and the fall out of the kidnapping. Frey also bounces back and forth in time from Sarah’s and Amy’s childhoods, to their adult lives before and after the kidnapping. The different sections and jumps in time are clearly sectioned off and announced so that it is easy to keep track of the story’s timeline. The sections that flashback to Sarah’s and Amy’s lives before Sarah kidnaps Emma help show the reader the events that shaped the two women and how they became the people that they are now.

There is a lot more to NOT HER DAUGHTER than just the kidnapping. Sarah’s and Amy’s entire lives come in to play, forming different storylines that have nothing to do with Emma or the kidnapping. These secondary storylines provide a break from the main kidnapping plot, and show that other people that doesn’t come to a standstill despite what has happened. Amy still has a husband, a young son, and her daily life to slog through. And Sarah has a business to run, family issues to deal sort through, and people who wonder what happened to her.

NOT HER DAUGHTER by Rea Frey is an all-consuming thriller that threatens to never let you go. It asks: who is a real mother ... the woman who gives birth or the one who commits a crime to safe-keep an abused child. Taut, poignant, suspenseful, and a definite must-read! 5/5

Thanks to the author, St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the review copy. Opinions are mine.

#NotHerDaughter #NetGalley

This book was very thought provoking. Although what Sarah did was wrong, she did it with good intentions and Emma’s quality of life improved immensely. Good book!

I stayed up way late last night, past my bedtime to finish Not Her Daughter by Rea Frey. I liked this book and it definitely kept me turning the pages. BUT…

First, read the plot:

Sarah is struggling with a breakup. She and her boyfriend Ethan have called it quits and she’s dealing with that heartbreak. A successful entrepreneur, she’s busy with work but carries around the pain of being abandoned by her mother as a child. When she sees a little girl at the airport being mistreated by her mother, and later sees the girl again, something comes over her and she takes the girl Emma. Sarah is both making up for the emotions of being left by her mother and is also saving the child who is clearly abused.

The story goes from Sarah’s point of view and Amy, the mother of Emma.

Is it wrong to save a child who is not being treated well? Should Sarah have taken Emma?

…the author did a great job of keeping the reader thoroughly engaged and wondering what was going to happen. I struggled (this is the BUT…from above) with Sarah stealing Emma. She knew it was wrong, but she did it anyway. Would a person take a child and go on the run with them even though they knew if they were caught, they’d be thrown in jail? Though I felt for Sarah, I kept thinking of taking someone’s child is just WRONG.

That being said, it was a good story and worth your time to read. It begs the question, what would YOU do?

I really enjoyed reading this book! From the very beginning it had my attention and I couldn't stop until I was finished reading it. I had never heard of Rea Frey before reading Not Her Daughter, but now I can't wait to read more of her. #NotHerDaughter #NetGalley

This book is a great read, little hard to understand at times and the ending was just blah. You have a beautiful, gray eyed little girl who is perfect in every way her mother is not. Her mother gets so angry and frustrated with this little girl she smacks her around and tells at her. A perfect stranger walks into the picture and decided that she will kidnap, protect, and go on the lamb for this little girl. Can a mother really be ok with a perfect stranger wanting to keep her child?

Wow. This was an awesome book! How far will one go to keep a child safe? This book covered a lot of issues and kept me completely engaged. Great summer read. Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and to NetGalley for providing me a galley of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Sarah was raised by an abusive mother, so when she sees Emma being abused by her mother, Amy, one day at the airport the encounter sticks in her mind. Later, she sees Emma again and when she witnesses Amy strike the little girl across the face, Sarah makes a rash decision to save Emma by kidnapping her. And Amber Alert goes out, but the longer the search goes on, the more Amy's bad parenting and abuse point to murder... and she's the prime suspect!
This book jumped between past and present, showing the perspective of both Amy and Sarah. The farther I read, the more I was rooting for the kidnapper, Sarah, trying to save a little girl from the physical and psychological scars that she still suffers from her own horrible mother.

This book was a little harder to read. I really wanted to read this book and I really wanted to love it, but I could only give it three stars. The plot was GOOD. REALLY good. The problem with this was that it was poorly written which made it hard for me to read. The characters stories for why they were the way they were (Amy especially) was riveting, it just didn't flow the way I would have liked it to because of the writing. Overall it was a good story and I would recommend it, the writing just could have been better.

Not Her Daughter will have you hanging on till the very end, unsure of how it will turn out. Interestingly, it will also keep you unsure of how you WANT it to turn out.
This book is told from two points of view. Sarah, the kidnapper, is ultimately trying to help a little girl escape a home where she is physically and verbally abused. Amy, the mother, has let her depression get ahold of her, and has such a terrible relationship with her daughter, she is nearly relieved when she disappears. Surprisingly, both characters are at least somewhat relatable.
The author did a great job keeping up the intensity throughout the story. I could feel the anxiety in my stomach each time Sarah had a close call. This book will keep your mind turning, even when it's over. What exactly is the right thing? Was it a kidnapping or an attempted rescue? Does Amy deserve another chance, or is the child better off with Sarah??
I was provided an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Emma is a five-year-old that lives a sad life. Her mother and father are less than perfect parents who don’t seem that interested in their daughter. When Sarah first encounters Emma, she has an immediate connection with the little girl because Sarah’s childhood was a bit sad and she often felt unwanted too. On a chance encounter, Sarah takes Emma. As the two avoid the nationwide search for Emma, they bond. However, Emma’s parents are back home wondering what happened to their child. Amy, Emma’s mother, is taking the worst of the suspicions and attacks on the family. To complicate matters, Amy is an unhappy wife and mother, and starts to question if she really wants her daughter to come back to them.

The story is told from both Sarah and Amy’s points of view. The story also alternates from before, during, and after the kidnapping. This was mostly fine, but there were a few times when the changing of timelines was confusing.

The story is fast-paced and compelling. I wasn’t sure how I wanted things to be resolved, but I wanted to keep reading to see how it would end. It’s sad to imagine a child growing up in an abusive household and feeling unwanted, but it’s near impossible to imagine a child living a safe life with a kidnapper. Basically, both Sarah and Amy were unstable, so I couldn’t really root for either one of them.

Overall, a great debut novel. I would have enjoyed a little more resolution toward the end, but, then again, it’s nice to ponder a few things.

That may have been the most absurd premise for a story that I have ever read. Who in their right mind would take a child they think is being abused and run away? And then you want me to believe that she can traipse around the country and not get caught. Even worse, you want me to believe that the mother actually says "Take her."

Loved this book, even when I was not reading it I kept thinking about it and couldn’t wait to pick it up again and I finished it in a day. Would definitely recommend to others and can’t wait to read other titles from this author.

Highly recommend!!

The last chapter...the one right before the epilogue...literally gave me goosebumps!

What would you do if by chance, you saw a mother abusing her five year old daughter, not once but twice?

Would you intervene?

If your own mother had abandoned you when you were eight years old, and you knew the pain of what it was like to grow up knowing your own mother did not love you enough to stay, do you think it might alter what you would do in this situation?

“Her Mother Had Her Chance”

Not thinking it through but wanting to protect 5 year old Emma, from her abusive mother, Amy, Sarah decides she needs to protect this little girl. If you are rescuing a child from a damaging situation is kidnapping wrong?

Excerpt: “I am rewriting her story, altering her memories, shifting her shitty childhood into clean chunks: before, during after. Then, Now, Someday”

That is how the story unfolds, from the perspectives of both Sarah and Amy.

Sarah has taken Emma, and now they are hiding out.
Emma has now been gone since June.
And, Amy, her mother, is unsure if she even wants Emma back.

The women’s personalities are so vividly drawn that when I was hearing from Sarah, I was rooting for her, despite the fact that she is a kidnapper.

When it was Amy’s turn my nose wrinkled in disgust at her crude language and ability to justify her very unacceptable behavior.

Who will you sympathize with?

I would like to thank Netgalley, the publisher-St. Martin’s Griffin and the author Rea Frey for the ARC I received in exchange for a candid review.

If you enjoy issue driven fiction, you can pre-order this now! Available Aug. 21st, 2018!

This story grabs hold of your sense of what's the right on so many levels. Rescuing an abused child or not; a mother in torment or secretly not; is happiness being safe and loved even without your family; is it love when you look the other way? This is an amazing angle for a story to be told from. No perfect characters with no perfect solution, this will keep you turning the pages long after the sun goes down.

YES! All the YES! I was hooked from the beginning. The story, the writing style, the characters. I loved it all!

Is kidnapping ever justified? Is it considered kidnapping if the child wants to go? The book explores this question beautifully. The story is told from the viewpoint of the mother and the woman caring for Emma. It is a wonderful story but some areas are a little far fetched. Overall this was a wonderful book and I would recommend it.