The Marsh King's Daughter by Karen Dionne

Read from Aug 26th 2017 - Sept 4th 2017.

Published June 13th 2017 by Sphere.

Format    Paperback -  320 pages.

Synopsis - Taken from Goodreads - 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

My Review - Told from the perspective of the daughter of the kidnapped victim. The daughter that was born into captivity. The daughter born to the father that happened to be the kidnapper and keeper of teenage kidnapped and then his own daughter. Told many years post their release and a few years after the daughters mother had unfortunately passed away after going through such turmoil psychologically since release from his clutches.
My star rating, I appreciate is going to be rather controversial, but this book, in my opinion didn't connect to me internally on any level. There wasn't any tugging at heart strings or sitting on the edge of the seat tension and I certainly didn't feel the need to raise my finger nails to my grinders. For a book that is described as a suspense thriller, I neither found it suspenseful nor thrilling in the slightest.
There seemed to be a huge amount of description and emphasis on nature and surroundings which was great, I love nature but this was a suspense thriller book remember and this was what I chose it for and what I indeed expected to find when reading it. Describing surroundings did make it feel a little lonely and a little dark, when you think about being stranded out there in the woods with no one around for miles which was what the writer was obviously trying to portray in one respect but I, personally didn't get anything else from that because there wasn't enough description about the things that would have made it suspenseful and thrilling to me.

As far as characters are concerned. I found Helena (the daughter), had no redeeming qualities at all. There was just absolutely nothing about her. This may too be because there was less character description and emotion involved in her portrayal than the surroundings about her. I couldn't have cared less about her or her story to be honest. The whole book was way too calming for a thriller style story. The father escaped from prison and it didn't even make me blink. I think I expected a lot more from a thriller!
I didn't not like the book It is beautifully written, grammatically correct. The writer can definitely write books, however for me, it was 'just ok'.

2 and a half stars out of 5.