Book review: Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth

Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth is probably my favourite book of hers that I’ve read. I have missed a few however as I’m not sure I get review copies from her publisher.

Interestingly an ‘app’ I used for my website requires me to input certain information… like the book’s genre and I found this one hard to classify. It’s not a thriller or crime fiction but has the right amount of mystery or intrigue that I enjoy in a book that isn’t specifically billed [as crime fiction or a thriller]. There’s no ‘suspense’ as such so we’re not on the edge of our seats and worried our protagonists’ lives are at risk, but there’s a deep level of intrigue that keeps you turning the pages… needing to get the bottom of the mystery.

For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. As young girls they were rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother, Miss Fairchild, on an idyllic farming estate and given an elusive second chance at a happy family life.

But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild and thought they were free. Even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere in the shadows of their minds. When a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?

I really liked all three leads and Hepworth has done a great job developing their characters, giving Jessica, Norah and Alicia very different personalities. In some ways Jessica feels like the lead as we meet her first and she goes into Miss Fairchild’s care from a young age and is – initially at least – raised as her own child. It’s seemingly money that drives her carer however and she fosters Norah and Alicia, and later babies for short-term stays… her ‘darling girls’ she refers to them. Albeit quite often only in front of their caseworkers.

The book opens with the three women learning that a body has been found at the site of their former foster home and they’re required by the police to return to Port Agatha to share details about their time there. We quickly learn those years were far from idyllic and when Miss Fairchild’s increasingly erratic behaviour deteriorates they complain and their allegations brought to the police. Who dismiss them.

Miss Fairchild is obviously narcissistic and uses the girls fears’ against them, including the fact that they would be separated if removed from her care. Hepworth does a great job at projecting their closeness or kindredness and there’s certainly a bond, forged at Wild Meadows, that eclipses everything else in their lives.

Hepworth also traverses the journey between the past and present seamlessly, referencing something from 25 years earlier – from the time the three girls were fostered by Miss Fairchild – then dipping back into the past to provide more detail. (Showing rather than telling, which works really well.)

There’s also an unnamed narrator – one of our characters obviously – sharing their own past. It’s fairly easy to work out who it is but Hepworth delays the inevitable, offering up several well-timed ‘reveals’ as well as a few surprises.

I very much enjoyed this read, as I said it’s my favourite book of hers to date, so I’m glad I finally got a copy.