Dead Daughters by Tim Meyer – REVIEW

Drew Lowery is living the American Dream. He has the perfect family, a stable job, and a beautiful home in the suburbs of central New Jersey. Things can't get much better. But what seems like the ideal life is suddenly upended when he receives a blank envelope in the mail.

Inside lies a picture of his daughter, a photograph of her violent murder. Only it can't be her. He just tucked her in and kissed her goodnight ten minutes ago. But the mysterious Polaroid is only the beginning.

There's the van following his daughter to school. The man she sees outside her window late at night. The fact someone entered her room while the Lowerys slept peacefully.

Local authorities are clueless. No leads, no clues, and ultimately—no answers. Drew launches his own investigation, falling into a hole of lies and deceit, a truth he never saw coming. Dead Daughters is the new twisted thriller from Tim Meyer, author of The Switch House and Kill Hill Carnage.

Dead Daughters blew my motherfucking mind! It’s twisted and horrifying, and I couldn’t wait to turn the next page. You can feel Meyer laughing at your shock.

Dead Daughters is a story to remind me to be grateful for the boring, mundane, and uneventful life I lead. It’s definitely not something that you want your life to resemble – uncertainty, unimaginable stress, and a worry that your daughter will be taken and end up dead.

The story examines the dynamics of relationships through a microscope. A Couple. A cherished daughter. A photograph that depicts the death of your child. Friends. Strangers.  The premise of the story had me immediately hooked. You round up your birthday celebrations and discover a photo has been left in your mailbox by a stranger. An old polaroid of a dead little girl in what appears to be a basement and it looks remarkably like your daughter, in the very same yellow dress that she owns. However, it can’t be her, can it? She is sleeping upstairs and very much alive.

Drew Lowery and his wife, Eve have it all. Great jobs, a home in a safe neighbourhood, and the love of his beautiful daughter, Dinah. Of course, that all changes when he discovers the photo that will change the entire dynamics of his life. They report the incident to the police and things become more convoluted and twisty. More messages are left for Drew, and it becomes apparent that this person is hunting his family.

Life never follows a strict set of plans the universe has different ideas and will let it be known when you least expect it. No matter how much you build scaffolding around your perfectly constructed life something will come along and rock the foundations. Drew made me question why he couldn’t see things that appeared in front of his face. A novel that makes me shout at the characters always tends to be my favourite type of read – it evokes the emotion whether you want it to or not.

Dead Daughters is a staircase – keep walking up those stairs, with each step more is added to the story, tension, a creeping sense of dread, and each precarious step left me questioning whether I was the insane one. Misdirection here, a lie there, a signpost pointing the way in which we should walk but unbeknownst to us readers, the author turned the signpost turning in the wrong direction.     

Tim Meyer made it incredibly easy to feel the pressure and the unease of a situation that would break most of us. I found myself frozen by the seeds of mistrust that are scattered throughout the story.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tim Meyer dwells in a dark cave near the Jersey Shore. He’s an author, husband, father, podcast host, blogger, coffee connoisseur, beer enthusiast, and explorer of worlds. He writes horror, mysteries, science fiction, and thrillers, although he prefers to blur genres and let the story fall where it may.

Repped for Film/TV by

Karmen Wells/The Rights Factory

Tim Meyer