Too many twists spoil this thriller

The Wrong Daughter is British author Dandy Smith’s third novel, after One Small Mistake and The Perfect Match, all thrillers. The Wrong Daughter is set in Stonemill, described as an idyllic market town in the heart of Somerset. 

The novel begins with two sisters, Olivia, 13, and Caitlin, 10, alone in their home, Blossom Hill House. Unbeknownst to the girls, a masked man watches them through an open window and eventually abducts Olivia. Years later, the younger sister, now a teacher, receives an urgent call from her father telling her that Olivia has reappeared. But that’s only the beginning. Is she her sister, or is she an impostor?

What has Olivia’s disappearance done to Caitlin and the parents over the years? Caitlin’s relationship with her parents has always been fraught with an unspoken tension. She has to carry the burden of being the daughter who can’t disappoint, who has to fill the void left by her missing sister. This burden affects her other relationships, life choices and career moves. The author has examined not just the relationships between siblings but has also explored the knots in the parent-children equation. The book makes the reader want to root for the younger sister, who is constantly gaslit by the people in her life. The return of the missing sister leads to the unmasking of other characters — are people really who they claim they are? The reader is also led to wonder if they can really trust any character in the novel, barring the younger sister Caitlin. 

Just as we are introduced to Caitlin and Olivia’s story, there is a parallel track. That of Elinor and her brother, Heath, who live at Ledbury Hall. Their parents are dead; Uncle Robert visits them over the weekends and is their legal guardian. The character of Heath is a possible hat tip to Heathcliff of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, the anti-hero, who destroys everything he loves. There is a suggestion of incest, and Heath loves his sister Elinor to the point of an unhealthy obsession. Much like Heathcliff’s love for Catherine in Wuthering Heights. 

The fates of the two sets of siblings are intertwined, leading to the climax. This doesn’t come as a surprise because the writer has built up the parallel track for so long that one begins to wonder when the paths of the two sets of siblings will cross. 

The hook is in place, the setting’s done right, the suspense is sustained at least for the major part, and there are many twists and turns. A solid thriller, then? Dandy Smith pulls it off for the most part, but it suffers from a film’s equivalent of the curse of the second half. 

The thriller shines in parts where one doesn’t actually notice the writing, and those parts make it an enjoyable read. A good piece of writing doesn’t draw attention to itself. Descriptions like “buttercup yellow and cornflower blue”  or passages like “I catch flashes of his white teeth…but I can’t grasp his words, they dance about me like falling petals. I stare into the rich navy of his pyjamas. The coffee brown of his greying hair. The sea green of his eyes,” don’t give any breathing space to the reader or let her imagination take over. Caitlin is an artist in the novel, and one could attribute the focus on colours, patterns and imagery to her love for art, but they inadvertently hamper the pace and flow of the thriller. Repetitions are another dampener. The reader is reminded, for example, of Olivia’s beauty, her brilliant blue eyes and her golden hair once too often. 

A commonly used grounding technique in therapy is focusing on describing what’s around you in detail, concentrating on colours, patterns and scenes. Caitlin uses this technique when Olivia supposedly has a panic attack. Together, they focus on things around them and the colours they see — “yellow slide”,  “red swing set”, and eventually introducing the reader to “aureolin sunflowers”. (Aureolin is a cobalt yellow used in watercolour and oil paintings.) Aureolin comes back as a motif towards the end. 

The author seems to have extended the grounding technique and her character’s love for art to her writing as well. Dandy Smith has dedicated this book to her long-term therapist friend, and one can see why. Although The Wrong Daughter is engaging, the story turns progressively dramatic towards the end, leaving you a tad underwhelmed.