The Marsh King’s Daughter (AKA Home) by Karen Dionne @KarenDionne @LittleBrownUK #MarshKing

 

 

I’m editing this review to say that the book has had a name change, it is now called Home in the UK. It’s also being made into a movie which is really very exciting!

My Review:

I’d heard quite a lot about The Marsh King’s Daughter before reading it, all of it good. There’s always a risk when that happens that the book will let you down, so with slight trepidation, and without knowing anything about the story, I started to read.

And boy, what a read it was! I thought that the Marsh King’s Daughter was an incredibly written book, the amount of research that the author must have put into the story is mindblowing.

I really liked that the story was told from Helena’s point of view, going from when she was really young all the way up to an adult and a parent herself. The journey took Helena from a young child, totally unaware of the circumstances of her existence and the world beyond the marsh that she lives in with her mother and father, who she totally idolises as he teaches her how to survive in the wild, to track and hunt animals, and, perhaps most importantly, to disrespect her mother.

But as Helena grows up she can’t help but see flaws in her father, and she begins to see that maybe her mother is stronger than she ever imagined.

The Marsh King’s Daughter is sometimes upsetting and hard to read, the brutality that her father displayed is extreme. What made it even harder to read was how real it felt, I often got so caught up in the story that I was sure that Helena was real and that I was, in fact, reading a true crime book.

Karen Dionne is not an author that I had heard of before The Marsh King’s Daughter but she is certainly an author that I will be looking out for and very keen to read more of. I am completely in awe of how she crafted this book, it is definitely one to add to your reading pile.

Thank you to the publisher for a copy of The Marsh King’s Daughter through Netgalley.

Blurb:

The suspense thriller of the year – The Marsh King’s Daughter will captivate you from the start and chill you to the bone.

‘I was born two years into my mother’s captivity. She was three weeks shy of seventeen. If I had known then what I do now, things would have been a lot different. I wouldn’t have adored my father.’

When notorious child abductor – known as the Marsh King – escapes from a maximum security prison, Helena immediately suspects that she and her two young daughters are in danger.

No one, not even her husband, knows the truth about Helena’s past: they don’t know that she was born into captivity, that she had no contact with the outside world before the age of twelve – or that her father raised her to be a killer.

And they don’t know that the Marsh King can survive and hunt in the wilderness better than anyone… except, perhaps his own daughter.

Packed with gripping suspense and powerful storytelling, The Marsh King’s Daughter is a one-more-page, read-in-one-sitting thriller that you’ll remember for ever.

About the Author:

Karen Dionne is the author of dark psychological suspense THE MARSH KING’S DAUGHTER, coming June 13, 2017 from G.P. Putnam’s Sons, and three other novels.

Karen is cofounder of the online writers community Backspace, and organizes the Salt Cay Writers Retreat held every other year on a private island in the Bahamas. She is a member of the International Thriller Writers, where she served on the board of directors as Vice President, Technology.

The Marsh King’s Daughter by Karen Dionne is out on 13th June, 2017 and is available from Amazon UK and Amazon US.