All of us long for our child to be special and to be great at what they choose to do in life. But does this wish hold true even if your only daughter is a natural killer? What if she begins to show her talent as an assassin at a really young age?
Daniel is faced with just such a situation. His little girl, the light of his life, is a killer. The book opens with a heart-wrenching statement that would send chills down the spine of any parent: I was there for her first kill. That opening line commanded my attention and yanked me into the story. My first thought was, “Oh, God! How did he handle this?” I knew from that first sentence that I was going to really like this book.
Mina grew up as any other child, but she was different. You did not want to cross this little girl or make her mad. I thought of The Bad Seed or The Good Son, but Mina is very different from the child killers in those movies. Mina does have feelings, although after the first chapter, I wasn’t sure she was going to have any at all.
The story doesn’t just focus on his assassin daughter though. The author takes you back through the most important and memorable part of Daniel’s life and shows you how he met Mina’s mom, the love of his life.
The title of the book pretty much says it all, but it doesn’t give a clue about all that is going on behind the scenes. The daughter is an assassin, yes, but how is she her father’s assassin? Does she kill him, or does she kill for him? The plot, full of love, betrayal, and suspense, will take you on a ride you will never forget.
The ending? Not everyone will appreciate the way the story ends. I really should have seen it coming, and part of me did, but my hopes for everyone to have a happy ending were crushed. At first, I was a bit disappointed, but the longer I thought about it, the more I saw that the book could not have ended any other way. The satisfactory and logical ending was, in its own unique way, a happy one that opened up new beginnings.
I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. If you would like your own copy, all you have to do is click on the Amazon link below. It will take you straight to an Amazon page where you can purchase Nathan Gross’s latest book.
Amazon Link: My Daughter, My Assassin
Recommended Articles:
Nathan Gross Interview – Child Assassins, Romance, and Happy Endings
Bullied. Bullied. Bully. – Guest Post by Nathan Gross
The Freeing of Jonathon Mark – a Review
Nathan Gross Interview – Life, MS, and Writing
Favorite Sentences
I was there for her first kill.
The first splash was large, a puddle of congealing blood sitting thick like pudding in the snow.
But my little girl. . .could she really be this monster?
I swallow and the razors slice me, landing in the pit of my stomach in a splash of acid, crude and burning.
Like a child I tense, try to recoil away from him, but I am laid out flat like a piece of meat at the butcher.
New Words Learned:
arbutuses – two evergreen plants of the family Ericaceae (heath family)
bum-bags – fanny packs
Laphroiag – A single malt scotch whiskey from the Islay region of Scotland.
richesse – wealth, riches
scrag – a lean or scrawny person
torchis – This article explains this word so much better than I could ever hope to: What is Torchis?
About the Author:
Nathan Gross is passionately obsessed with scratching the itch that is his absolute need to write. Whether it be in the form of novels or short stories, film/video scenarios, scripts or songs: writing keeps the demons at bay.
Nathan draws on and interprets the events that transpire around him, transforming minute observations and a distant, large view of the world into prose. He expresses at once his hopes and despairs, and equally his surprise and complete comprehension of events before, or as they unfold, if not always as everyone else sees them.
Born and raised in Melbourne, Nathan now resides with his family in the southwest of France.
