December 27, 2015

Julia's Daughters - Colleen Faulkner

Kensington Publishing, October 27, 2015.





Three Stars



Julia’s Daughters is ultimately about grief – the many ways people grieve, even within one family. And most importantly, it is about finding time to grieve when others still need you to be present in their lives. Losing a family member often pushes apart those that remain – in this novel, Julia and her daughters must relearn to communicate and care for each other.


Julia’s daughter Caitlin died six weeks ago in a car accident – and her other daughter Haley was driving. While Haley acts out at home and at school, and the girls’ father Ben loses himself in work, youngest daughter Izzy is virtually ignored. Meanwhile, Julia can’t get out of bed, until she receives a call from the school that Haley has been expelled. It takes the threat of losing another daughter to bring Julia back to life, and attempt to put her family back together.


Haley is angsty but not overdone, for the most part – although she occasionally slips into a teen goth cliché. She is acting out her pain and guilt over Caitlin’s death, but she is also keeping a secret about that night, to protect her family. Izzy is ten years old, and she adds the comic relief, although it is very dark humour. She comes up with many euphemisms to describe Caitlin’s death (“pushing up daisies,” “crossing the River Styx”) but she still seems to have a better handle on her grieving process than most of the adults around her. However, she refuses to speak to Haley as she blames her completely for the death of Caitlin. The novel is written from the alternating perspectives of Julia, Haley and Izzy, and each voice is distinct and believable.


Faulkner shows us strong, convincing relationships between a mother and her daughters, as well as between the sisters themselves. I only wish the marriage aspects had been treated with similar care – Ben is a caricature that we are forced to dislike, and Julia’s mother-in-law is over the top awful. In other scenes, the author doesn’t shy away from tough issues, such as drug use and self-mutilation. These serious topics are sprinkled with moments of humour – a light in the dark, and the possibility of hope after the worst tragedy.


When things are at their worst, Julia decides to take her daughters on a trip. Although the road trip premise was kind of silly (it’s hard to believe that jumping into a car and driving across the country will solve problems this big), it was also emotionally realistic, and the ending was happy in its own way.  Julia’s family is in its own intense world of grief, but it is made lighter by Izzy’s jokes, and the fast pace of the road trip scenes. Overall, Julia’s Daughters is about women finding strength in impossibly painful situations, and the resiliency to move forward with life, together.


I received this novel from Netgalley and Kensington Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

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