review: first daughter by eric van lustbader

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The Inauguration Day prologue of First Daughter sucked me right in. I particularly loved the last sentence of the prologue, “And like the contents of Pandora’s box, out would come death in amber waves of grain.” So I raced through the book as the mystery of who kidnapped the president-elect’s daughter unfolded. Impressively, I was kept guessing as to who all the players were right up until the final pages when nearly all is revealed. There remains one little bit of an “I wonder if…” for me, but perhaps that is to be addressed in the sequel (the recently released Last Snow, which I’ll be reading very soon). Even with that shred of mystery remaining, the conclusion is quite satisfying. The “kidnapper reveals the story” section was well done; since that’s a part where many fail, I was glad for the believable confession. My only criticism of First Daughter is that I had a hard time believing Jack McClure’s backstory: he talks back to his father even though he’s abused daily, then he just decides to leave on a day that doesn’t really seem any different from the others.
4/5
Review copy provided by The Book Report Network.