Daisy Darker
Alice Feeney, 2022
Mystery, thriller & crime Contemporary fiction
A darkly funny family mystery about inheritance, old grudges, and a narrator who has already died more than once.
Feels like dread, wonder and serenity. About family, death and memory.
A page from the book
The daughter named after a flower that gets picked, trampled, or chained.
My mother had wanted a son. She already had two daughters when I was born, and chose to name us all after flowers. My eldest sister is called Rose, which turned out to be strangely appropriate as she is beautiful but not without thorns. Next to arrive, but still four years ahead of me, was Lily. The middle child in our floral family is pale, and pretty, and poisonous to some. My mother refused to name me at all for a while, but when the time came, I was christened Daisy. She is a woman who only ever has a plan A, so none of us were given the contingency of a middle name. There were plenty of other—better—options, but she chose to name me after a flower that often gets picked, trampled on, or made into chains. A mother’s least favorite child always knows that’s what they are. Alice Feeney.Alice Feeney spent years as a BBC journalist before publishing fiction; her books are known for unreliable narrators and last-page turns.
Books that feel like this
More by Alice Feeney
Rock Paper Scissors
Alice Feeney, 2021
A marriage-saving weekend in the Scottish Highlands becomes a test of memory, trust and weather as a husband and wife discover how little they know each other.
Sometimes I Lie
Alice Feeney, 2017
A narrator who cannot be trusted picks apart memory, marriage and the stories we tell ourselves, in a thriller built on what is heard and what is said.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- What is Daisy Darker like?
- Feels like dread, wonder and serenity. About family, death and memory.
- What should I read after Daisy Darker?
- If you liked Daisy Darker, try The Wife Upstairs (Freida McFadden), Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Ransom Riggs) and The Good Girl (Mary Kubica).
A taste of the feed
Some houses are haunted by things that are too alive.
I can’t say to him what I’m really thinking, which is that this house gives me the creeps. Maybe Victoria loved it here, but I don’t. And for that matter, his wife gives me the creeps too. There’s something about her and that blank expression that terrifies me. It’s an awful thing to say about a woman who has been through something horrible, but I can’t help it.
The Wife Upstairs · Freida McFadden
The relief of letting someone else carry your sadness, just for a moment.
But he holds me so tightly that for a moment, the emotions are at bay. The sadness and fear, the regret and the loathing. He bottles them up inside his arms so that for a split second I don’t have to be the one carrying the weight of them. For this moment, the burden is his.
The Good Girl · Mary Kubica
A compliment that treats love as a kind of reading.
Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you.
We Were Liars · E. Lockhart
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