There are those for whom recklessness is a state of abandon. Of thoughtlessness. Of a conscious decision to ignore repercussions and eventualities. And I bet it’s liberating for them, like spinning in circles and falling to the ground. But that’s not me. My recklessness was a demonstration of restraint. I spun in circles to prove I could walk a straight line after.
Elizabeth Little’s Dear Daughter has all the thrills of a Gillian Flynn novel, dressed up with the glamour of a jaded Los Angeles socialite.
Janie Jenkins is a sarcastic and spoiled celebutante (think Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan). Which makes her situation all the more intolerable—as a teenager, she was convicted for her mother’s murder.
Now, after ten years, Janie’s conviction has been overturned on a technicality. With paparazzi hot on her heels, LA’s it girl is out to clear her name. In a modern day mash-up of texts, Wikipedia entries, and CNN breaking news e-mails, Little mocks the media and high society but doesn’t forget to build up a real story in there too. What really happened the night of the murder?
Janie’s search takes her where no modern day socialite has dared to go before: a small mining town in South Dakota. In the same vein as Tawni O’Dell’s One of Us, when a glamorous duck is placed in a small mining pond, the culture clash is sure to be memorable.
This is a mystery, but a hilarious one. Dear Daughter takes a shameless dive into celebrity culture, and the spoof is just wacky enough to work. Like a bad reality show that you can’t stop watching, you’ll find yourself consuming Dear Daughter in one sitting and wanting more when it ends.
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