The Marsh King's Daughter (2025)

*4.5 Stars* Thank you to Shotsmag for my paperback copy, I have given an honest review in exchange*

Helena was born in captivity, her mother having been abducted at the age of 14. To Helena, life in the marshlands is normal. She has no contact with the outside world, no electricity, no running water, no modern conveniences. She has grown to love her life of hunting and fishing; indeed she loves her Father and everything he teaches her about nature. Helena has no idea what her Father has done.

Helena’s only knowledge that there is a life outside of the marshes comes from some old National Geographic Magazines that she consumes with a passion. Her love for her Father is solid; but her mother on the other hand is something of an invisible creature, for she hardly ever smiles, never feels part of what Helena experiences with her father - so as the years pass, her mother becomes someone to be dismissed as inconsequential.

Helena knows her Father can be cruel and violent (particularly when he needs to teach her a lesson), but she doesn't know any other way of life so she accepts his punishments without question.

The narrative centered in the present day ratchets up the tension, for Helena is now married to Stephen and they have two young daughters Iris and Mari. She helps the family budget by making and selling jam to locals, and their life is good - until the day she hears the emergency broadcast announcing the escape of an armed and dangerous prisoner, the notorious child abductor ‘The Marsh King’, who is Helena’s Father.

Consumed with fear, Helena believes her Father will come looking for her as it was her fault that he was captured and incarcerated. She is now faced with confronting her past; a past she has kept hidden from her husband.

Despite the dark and disturbing theme, The Marsh King’s Daughter is a beautifully written book that swings effortlessly back and fro between the past and the present, slowly revealing the events leading up to Helena's escape from the marshlands.

I should indicate that the narrative includes visceral scenes of the hunting, killing of animals (as well as the cleaning of carcasses), though not gratuitous for the wildlife were killed for food, for survival and not for pleasure.

Karen Dionne’s remarkable thriller gives a fascinating insight into the relationship between captor and captive, as well as between hunter and the hunted. It is also a deeply engaging and thought provoking psychological thriller. The tension at times becomes unbearable due to the quality of the writing, making you turn the pages as if hypnotized by the narrative.

If you're brave enough to venture hand-in-hand with the author into the marshes, you'll certainly be well-rewarded, for The Marsh King’s Daughter is exceptional and hugely recommended.

My reviews can also be seen at: https://deesradreadsandreviews.wordpr...

I came across this book a few months ago. I knew it wasn't going to be released until June but I couldn't wait to read it. Once I started reading I didn't want to stop.

The narrator tells us that her mother was famous for things no one would never want to be famous for. She says we may recognize her mother's name, but we probably haven't thought about her for years....but she is sure we would remember she had a daughter and we would wonder what happened to her.

"But I won't tell you my mother's name. Because this isn't her story. It's mine"

Helena was twelve and her mother was twenty-eight when they were recovered from their captor. Helena had no idea they were captives. She never went to school, never rode a bicycle, never knew electricity or running water and only ever spoke with two people in twelve years. Her mother and father.

We learn that after leaving the marsh, Helena really struggled with social skills. After years of living only with her mother and father, Helena had to learn how to fit in and how to act in public and social situations.

"Shake hands when you meet someone. Don't pick your nose. Go to the back of the line. Wait your turn. Don't burp or pass gas in the presence of others"

After all these years, Helena seems to finally have the life she deserves. The bad days are behind her. Happily married with two daughters and her thriving business.

Unfortunately, the past isn't as buried as deep she thought.....

The story begins in the present. Helena Pelletier is dropping off orders of her homemade jam. Tourists and locals love her jam and sales are good. Helena decides to take her three-year old daughter, Mari to the beach after deliveries are done. She loses track of time and needs to hurry to meet her older daughter's bus. She turns on the radio in hopes that the music will help with her toddlers current meltdown. As she flips through the radio stations she hears the words escaped....prisoner ....armed and dangerous. It repeats. A dangerous man has escaped from prison, killing two guards in the process. They believe he's headed for the wild life refuge close to her home. But when she hears the name of the prisoner her heart nearly stops.

Jacob Hollbrook aka "The Marsh King" was serving a life sentence for child abduction and other crimes. The reason Helena is so horrified is that SHE is the one who put him in prison.

Jacob Hollbrook.....is her father.

She worries the police won't find him. He's in his element in the woods. She may have felt safe from him when he was behind bars. But now everything has changed. She hoped she would be able to tell her husband, Stephen all of the things she meant to tell him all of these years. However, before she has the chance, the police arrive to question her. They want to know if she knows where her father is. Stephen is in shock and also terrified for his family. He decides they should go to his parents until her father is captured. Helena tells him she must stay behind to help the police. Which is only partially true.

What she doesn't tell her husband is that she is going to go after her father. She's the only one who will be able to find him...using the skills her taught her himself.

She is The Marsh King's daughter and he taught her well.

The book alternates between the past and the present. Told from Helena's perspective, we learn a lot about her childhood. Her relationship with her father at the centre of it all. I can't imagine the internal struggle and conflicting emotions she would have, growing up the way she did. Twelve years is a long time and the bond has been created whether we like it or not. It would not be as easy as we think to turn off those feelings.

"part of me that will forever be the little pigtailed girl who idolized her father"

The Marsh King's Daughter fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson, is interspersed between chapters, which added to the story.

I've often wondered about women like Elisabeth Fritzl, Amanda Berry, and Jaycee Dugard and so many other women who have escaped or been rescued after being held captive for years. I've occasionally wondered about the children as well but this book really made it hit home for me. Of course it's difficult for the women who were help captive, but the children who were conceived and born in similar conditions? How would they acclimate to their new world?...new lives?

The characters, setting, and the plot are very well developed. Karen Dionne did an amazing job bringing her characters to life. Helena is damaged but also very brave and strong. I'm not a hunter so I did have a hard time reading some of the aspects of the hunting, killing and cleaning of the animals. However, I don't feel it was done in a way to glorify violence but it's a part of the story. This is how they lived and survived and it's amazing the things Helena learned at such a young age.

An amazing read that I really could have read it in one sitting. As I neared the end there's not much that could have torn me away. Compelling, intense, and unputdownable. This book is one that is going to stay with me for a very long time. I can't wait to see what Karen Dionne writes next.

Thank you G.P. Putnam's Sons and Karen Dionne for providing an advanced readers copy of this book for me to read in exchange for my honest review.

This is atmospheric and brilliant storytelling from an author whose talent becomes increasingly obvious as you begin to read this tale. Its appeal lies in the twin interweaving of dark fantastical fairytale and the more human tale of the hunter and the prey, where these roles shift, change, merging into a hypnotic dance between father and daughter. Helena is married to Stephen, a photographer and has two daughters, Iris and Mari. She lives in Michigan's Upper Peninsula on the edge of the marsh wilderness. She created a new identity to escape the media coverage that followed her mother's kidnapping at 15 by the notorious Marsh King, Jacob Holbrook, Helena's father.

Helena is brought up on the marshes, seeing no other humans until she is 11 years old. She is a wild child, a daddy's girl, and instrumental in ensuring that her father went to prison. Her family know none of her well publicised history. The Marsh King has escaped, killing two guards, with the consequent police manhunt and media spotlight. Helena can no longer hide, she knows the only person with the skills to find her father is her, no-one knows him better, he is Nanabozho, the trickster, and she loves him. She is determined that she will return him to prison. The book is an intimate character study delivered from Helena's perspective. Each chapter starts with a part of the The Marsh King's Daughter fairytale by Hans Christian Anderson with inescapable connections to Helena's life.

Her father is a storyteller whose tales whilst blurring the line between fact and fiction are hardwired into her psyche, into her blood, and her sense of identity. He is the sole contributer to her unsurpassed abilities in hunting, tracking, wilderness and survival skills. He is everything, her mother barely features. She is him, his shadow, the pea to his pod. We learn of her time growing up in the marshes, her obsession with 50 year old National Geographics - her only knowledge of the world outside, her enthrallment with the Vikings, her use of the doll that her mother made for her for target practice. We are given glimpses into her father's volatility and his need for absolute control. But can Helena remember everything? What exactly happened? What of Cousteau and Calypso? A faint memory tugs from her subconscious...something about the story her mother told her. This shapes a dangerous and blood spattered hunt for her father where her family is at stake into a journey into the past to come to terms with and acknowledge who she is.

This is a wonderful novel, it burrows into your consciousness and takes residence. It has an insidious charm with its themes of what it is to survive, love, loss, memory, and the problems associated with doing the right thing in a complicated family set up. The book has a riveting narrative interweaving the fantastical with the everyday, of a nature red in tooth and claw side by side with glimpses of nurture and protection. Helena is complex and her life has not been easy, you cannot help but want to know more about her. We come to understand the call of the wild is a representation of home. The Marsh King is not purely a figure of evil but a father who loves and is intimately connected with his daughter. The family, the roles and relationships within it, is often a can of worms exploited in fairytales and fiction, the author beautifully explores this territory. Cannot recommend this enough. Many thanks to Little, Brown for an ARC.

What I liked about the book?

I found this book to be unputdownable! It was dark and disturbing. I loved it. I was hooked from the very beginning and straight to the end. I didn't find this to be an edge of your seat thriller. It consisted of Helena's life in her past, being raised in captivity with her sociopath father and present, what her life was like afterwards. This book was very intriguing to me. I also found this to be very character driven. The author did Helena's character very well. My heart went out for Helena. Everything she went through was just awful. Jacob, the Marsh King was a sociopath. He was so self centered, centering himself on his needs and wants. He was a monster showing his true colors.

I always love a book that has a setting in a forest. Its my tranquil, peaceful spot and love the sounds of nature. I love to sit by the bonfire and always feel mesmerized by it. But I could never imagine having a life in captivity like this for years and years, and thinking that Helena thought her life was normal is just beyond me. Who wouldn't though, if this is the life you were raised up in.

My Review

This review does contain spoilers. If you don't want to read this part, read what I liked and didn't like and that will give you a view of what it is about.

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Helena's mother was just barely seventeen years old and was raped and abducted by the Marsh King, Jacob. She lived in captivity for fourteen years. Helena was born in captivity. She did not know that her mother was raped and abducted. Helena lived in captivity for thirteen years of her life in the marsh. She did not have any contact with human beings except her father and mother. She didn't have any clue that this was not a normal life and that her father was a sociopath, a violent man. She loved her father very much.
She went through years and years of abuse that was just awful. Her life was a nightmare and just unimaginable.

She then escapes from captivity. She has problems dealing with everyday normal life to fit in.
The story goes from the past to present. What Helena's life was like in captivity and then what her life is like afterwards.

Helena gets married and has two kids and her past comes back to haunt her when her violent father escapes from prison and she has to protect her family.

What I didn't like about the book?

The hunting scenes were disturbing and almost to much for me. I can understand why it was in the book though, since Jacob was an Indian and hunting was his life. This book isn't for everyone.

I highly recommend this one for those that love a dark read.

Lately, I've been reading a little more suspense/thriller. 'The Marsh King's Daughter' is the most recent book in this genre to catch my attention. It certainly lived up to my expectations for a creepy, edge of my seat story.

The story centers on Helena, a woman with a secret past. While she lives her "normal" life as a mother, occupied with mundane daily issues, there is far more going on beneath the surface. She is always looking over her shoulder, never quite able to settle down or rest easy.

What Helena hasn't told anyone is that her father is the notorious "Marsh King". He abducted her mother when she was a young girl, holding her captive for many years and forcing her to be his wife. Helena is a product of her mother's abuse at the hands of her abductor.

Of course, Helena did not know this for much of her youth. She was raised in a cabin in an isolated marsh. She grew up hunting and learning to survive off of the land. Truth be told, she loved it. She didn't know of any other way.

Looking back, she can see that her childhood wasn't without hardship. Her father's rule was supreme. If she or her mother dared to cross him, they were punished swiftly and harshly. As a child, she didn't have a basis for comparison. Now, it is clear to her that his actions were abusive.

Helena has long since come to terms with the fact that her father is a narcissistic psychopath. Everything in their lives revolved around keeping him happy. They lived in constant fear of setting him off, knowing that he could turn into a cruel, sadistic monster with the flip of a switch.

When Helena receives word that her father has escaped from prison, she has no doubt that he will be coming for her. After all, she knows that she was to blame for his eventual arrest. A man like her father doesn't forget and he doesn't forgive.

Her worst fears are proved true when a series of gruesome clues begins to pile up. It seems that her father is taunting her and trying to draw her back into a game that they used to play when she was little...only this time, she is hunting him. Sometimes, the hunter becomes the hunted though.

As Helena trekked through the wilderness in search of her father, I had chills. An eerie feeling pervaded this story from start to finish. All I can say is that it was creepy...very creepy.

Despite my enjoyment, I have to admit that I had a difficult time connecting with Helena. I admired her strength and the fact that she stood out from other heroines. However, I couldn't really relate to her much. It made it a little more difficult for me to connect with the story, but eventually I did.

Once this story got warmed up, it had my complete attention. As Helena's past was revealed through flashbacks, I began to piece together the entirety of the her life's story. Her father, who seemed harmless at first, was gradually shown to be a truly cruel man as the violence he bestowed upon his family increased over the years.

This was a great book. It kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time I was listening. There is something to be said for a book that can still make you want to check under your bed for monsters. If you're in the mood for something creepy and disconcerting, this is the one.

Check out more of my reviews at www.bookaddicthaven.com

5 stars! Wow - I’m still trying to catch my breath and slow my racing heart after finishing this fantastic book.

This book was SOOOOO GOOD! It was a fast paced, heart pounding, edge-of-my-seat, nail biting, suspenseful thriller. I was completely engrossed in the story from page one and addicted to finding out what would happen next - the intensity did not end until I hit the very last page. The story is so well-written and the characters are extremely well-developed – I was completely engaged and consumed in this riveting story.

I loved the main character, Helena, and connected with her right away. She was born into captivity and lived in isolation with her kidnapped mother and notorious child abductor father until the age of 12 when she and her mother escaped. Her story is one I will not forget.

I highly, highly recommend this book! It is going on my Favourites list! I feel terrible for whichever book I read next because it will be next to impossible to compare to the intensity and addictiveness of this amazing novel….

5 Stars.

Truly Captivating (for Helena, and Me).

“The Marsh King’s Daughter” hooks you from first few sentences: “I was born two years into my Mother’s captivity. She was three weeks shy of seventeen. If I had known then, what I do now, things would have been a lot different. I wouldn’t have adored my Father.” How could it not? It keeps you suspended on that hook throughout.

Helena is born under captivity .. yet she doesn’t know it. She grows up, learning to fish, trap, wield a knife and shoot, all by the age of 6. And she adores her father and thinks he is the coolest. She lives in the marshlands with her mom, her dad and their dog Rambo and it’s all she has ever known. Whatever she has learned has been through National Geographic or through her father.

Little Helena does not know that her life is not a normal one. Her mother was kidnapped at the age of fourteen by her father, Jacob Holbrook and he has been keeping her captive all this time. When Helena is twelve, she and her mother are rescued, Jacob is captured and all is revealed.

Years later, a grown-up Helena is living a new life with her family knowing absolutely nothing about who she really is. That is, until one day when her Jacob Holbrook escapes from prison and she has to come face to face with her past, in order to save her family and herself from the man she both loves and hates, her own father.

“The Marsh King’s Daughter” alternates between the past and the present: when Helena was young and she lived in the marshlands with her mother and father and the present day, as she is tracking her father after his escape from prison. The switch between timelines is effortless, worked very well and kept me in suspense the entire time. Helena’s ever-changing views on her father over the course of the novel were fascinating, as were her feelings for her mother. Karen Dionne did a phenomenal job in creating truly compelling, multi-dimensional characters here – all of whom evoked different emotions from me at different times in the novel. The writing is stellar: gripping, compulsive and suspenseful. And the idea of it? Scary as all get out. If this book doesn’t grab your attention, nothing will.

Published on Goodreads and Amazon on 8.27.17.

You know a story gets under your skin when you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it.

This is a psychological thriller that has the added thrill of a spin on a classic fairy tale. The premise is disturbing. Helena is the daughter of a man whom abducted her mom, who was incarcerated for his crime but has now escaped- to the marshlands of Michigan- where she grew up and was held hostage for the first 12 years of her life. Now, the hunt is on and she needs either to be the hunter or be the hunted.

Helena, now on the search for her father, reflects back on her life growing up in the marsh as she searches for her convicted father. Her life, as she knew it until the age of 12, when she realized it was far from what a normal family should be. The episodes of patience and tenderness contrasted with violence and sadistic tendencies, make it a struggle between loving her father and hating him. Her imaginary friends she created, Calypso and Cousteau, who help her survival and in the end, her escape.

Interspersed with quotes from the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, The Marsh King, this is a fast paced, creepy one. A game of cat and mouse with a father and daughter whose paths are about to converge and the past to be confronted. 4.5⭐️

4.5 Stars

Growing up, Helena never knew that they were different from other families; she didn’t know the story of how she came to be, didn’t know that her father had abducted her mother for the purpose of taking her as his wife. She loved her father, and didn’t think of him as a bad or dangerous man, although she knew that he was quick to anger toward her mother, at times. She really didn’t know any better, and how could she? She was his ”Bangii-Agawaateyaa”, his Little Shadow. The cabin they lived in out in the wild marshlands of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was completely isolated. If it weren’t for the old National Geographic magazines she had seen and read, she would know little about other people, about the world in general. But knowing about it, and living in it are different. She knew that there was a world out there, she just didn’t know how close, or how different it was from how they lived. She just didn’t know.

This is so beautifully written, the characters so fully drawn. Helena is a composite of her surroundings, her father, her isolation, her lack of understanding of any other kind of life than the one she’s living – with the exception of those inside her magazines – such a wonderful, complex protagonist.

With confident, gorgeous prose transporting you back and forth effortlessly through time and place, from Helena’s childhood to the day she hears the emergency news broadcast. The man she knows as her father has escaped prison, the prison where he has been for fifteen years. Since the day she put him there.

She knows the police will never find him. Only she knows how her father thinks, his skills, the things he taught her about tracking, the survival skills he has. She knows his ways, his stories, She also knows if she doesn’t find him, her husband and her two girls lives will never be the same.

This suspenseful story has a somewhat brooding tone, atmospheric, troubled, with the sense of disquiet building as the memories come to light. There’s an edge of psychological suspense, while you anxiously wait to see how the story unfolds. A tale certain to leave you breathless, heart pounding and wishing you could read it all over again for the very first time.

Recommended

Published: 13 Jun 2017

Many thanks for the ARC provided by G.P. Putnam’s Sons

I'd rate this 4.5 stars.

Helena and her parents lived an isolated life in a cabin on marshland in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. They had no electricity, no creature comforts, but Helena learned so much from her father—how to hunt; how to shoot; how to kill, dress, and cook an animal; how to appreciate nature and the outdoors.

She never understood why her mother always seemed so afraid of her father, although she knew he hurt her from time to time, and while he punished Helena and sometimes taught her very painful lessons, she still idolized him, and wanted to be just like him.

When she was 12 she finds out that her father kidnapped her mother when she was a teenager, and has kept her captive for 14 years. Helena was the product of this abduction. Although she is still too young to fully grasp the implications of this discovery, and is torn between still wanting to stay with him, and escaping a man she knows has the potential to be savagely violent.

"Most of the time when I look back at the way I was raised, I'm able to view things fairly objectively. Yes, I was the daughter of a kidnapped girl and her captor. For twelve years, I lived without seeing or speaking to another human being other than my parents. Put like that, it sounds pretty grim. But that was the hand I was dealt, and I needed to call a spade a spade if I was ever going to move forward..."

Years later, Helena's past is a secret from everyone, and in many ways, she is miles away from the girl she was when she was 12. She has a loving husband, two young daughters, and a business making artisan jams and jellies from the fruit that grows near her Upper Peninsula home. At times the niceties of social convention she learned late in life chafe her, and she must escape to the solitude and nature she cherished so much as a child. But despite her odd idiosyncrasies, her husband has no idea of her lineage.

And then, some 20 years after her escape from the marsh, she hears on the news that a prisoner has escaped from his maximum security confinement, killing two guards, and is headed toward the marshland. Her father. Suddenly Helena's life is wide open, much to her husband's surprise, and she realizes that her father is headed her way. She must do what her father trained her all those years ago: find him and capture him, before he harms others, before he destroys her family and the life she has made.

"The truth is, sometime between the officers' first question and when the door closed behind them, I realized that if anyone is going to catch my father and return him to prison, it's me. No one is my father's equal when it comes to navigating the wilderness, but I'm close. I lived with him for twelve years. He trained me, taught me everything he knows. I know how he thinks. What he'll do. Where he'll go."

In The Marsh King's Daughter, Karen Dionne has created a tense, emotional narrative, juxtaposing the story of a girl raised by a father she idolizes but doesn't understand, in an environment she loves but has no clue about the real reason they live there, and the story of a woman who has buried her past and tried, fitfully, to start anew, even though you can never truly lose who you are. Helena's past and present unfurl, and you understand what has brought her to this moment, but you don't really know how she'll react, when she's never truly felt comfortable anywhere other than the marsh.

I thought this was a really terrific read, and it's one of those books that will make a fantastic movie. I was able to visualize Helena's search for her father, the warring feelings inside her hoping she'll find him and hoping he'll have left her behind once and for all. Dionne is a great storyteller, and even though the plot may be a little predictable, you are pulled in from the beginning and don't want to put the book down until you see how everything unfolds.

A few caveats, however. For a book full of tension, I felt it dragged on a tiny bit too long—I wanted to know everything about her childhood on the marsh and how she got to present day, but I also wanted the confrontation between daughter and father to come quicker than it did, although the payoff is worth it. The book does have some graphic violence (towards men and women, and some towards a child), some graphic descriptions of hunting and butchering animals, and a little bit of animal cruelty, so be forewarned. One or a combination of these may be a deal breaker for some.

I hesitate using the term "beach read," but The Marsh King's Daughter really feels like one, full of suspense, action, and emotion. It definitely helps put your own life problem and your own relationship with your parents in perspective, because I certainly hope the fictional life Dionne created for her far outweighs the complications of yours!!

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This book was not a suspense thriller nor did it "chill me to the bone." Mostly it pissed me off. Sorry, but amid all the glowing 4 and 5 star reviews, there is my takeaway. I detested the main character, Helena, and I am sorry for the couple of hours I spent of my life reading this.

It had a great premise, the daughter of a man who abducted a young teenaged girl and kept them in the marsh for years, comes of age and FINALLY decides to DO SOMETHING about the life she is living though she worships her horror of a father. The "Marsh King" is a sadistic bastard, a narcissitic sociopath, who tutors his daughter on the ways of the native Americans who lived in the upper peninusla. The skills he teaches her are meant only to recreate Helena in his image, and take her love away from her poor mother. Helena has little use for her abused mother wanting only to please her monster of a father. Helena learns to hunt, track and kill. When she makes a mistake, she is punished. But does that affect her feelings for her father -- oh no. Yeah, I get that she's a child but she totally lacks any empathy or insight. When help comes in the form of a lost snowmobiler, she finally decides it's time to take her mother away.

This was a very depressing book. I am sure that I will be in the minority not finding anything redemptive in Helena's final stand. Too little, too late. I really wanted to like it, but I didn't. Every little petty thought Helana had made me angry. I get that she and her mother were VICTIMS, but instead of being some sort of solace to her mother, she chose her father's path. Sure she was a bit afraid of her father, but she did not really see his evil -- oh yes, I understand that he was all she knew of men. Their isolated life, their lack of any information about the world outside. Helena had no empathy for her mother's plight nor did she care much about her. Definitely Helena was the Marsh King's Daughter above all else. She had a bit of psychopathy herself!

Thank you to NetGalley and Edelweiss as well as the publisher for the e-book ARC to read and review. It was just not my cup of tea and I wouldn't recommend it.

Daddy was a sociopath.....who liked to tell stories...
....and his biological daughter, Helena, .....protagonist...(child version of Stockholm Syndrome), was almost like daddy's counterpart ....or as they often say: "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree".
Helena's mother? - Her character was written in the shadow - yet - sad! Just sad!

I coasted through this book pretty quickly- (one sitting) .
I wasn't a fan of a couple of the graphic scenes - but overall it's not a 'heavy-tension' book -- actually rather simplistic writing.
I wouldn't give it glowing stars - but it was the type of story where readers can think about these type of situations:
.....a young woman kidnap-
.....a child is born - raised off the grid -
.....daddy is caught after many years -
..... daddy goes to prison
......daddy escapes prison
..... daughter loves daddy ....
......only Helena knows how daddy thinks. Having learned his skills from living in the wild - killing bears and wolves are as natural as washing dishes -- Helena must be the one to capture him herself....and send him back to prison...(of course we need a story)
......back into the woods Helena goes ...

As for Helena's husband and two children - not to worry - they are only chop liver until Helena's wildness work is done!

Good - predictable ending --not Amazing - but for a quick-read library overdrive ebook readily available- its not bad.

The Hans Christian Andersen inserts were clever. I also enjoyed the nature descriptions of the wetlands, lakes, and streams.... it added a great atmosphere to the storytelling.

This was enjoyable enough!!

Wow! Well that was one heck of a good read!

THE MARSH KING’S DAUGHTER by KAREN DIONNE is an extremely gripping fast-paced suspenseful psychological thriller that had me totally engaged, entertained, and interested throughout this whole book. I was flipping those pages as fast as I could in anticipation and fascination finishing this book in less than 24-hrs. I could not put this book down!

KAREN DIONNE delivers an intense, atmospheric, and an angst driven read here with well-developed characters that is extremely well-written with a lot of detail. Just a warning that there is also a very graphic hunting scene that some readers might find disturbing.

THE MARSH KING’S DAUGHTER is told in our main characters, Helena’s perspective alternating between the past and the present. When we first meet Helena we learn that she is happily married with two little girls and then she gets news that her convicted father has escaped from prison and then the action begins with a heart-stopping cat and mouse game of daughter against father.

From Helena’s story in the past we learn all about her childhood of being raised in captivity where she is actually oblivious to the fact that her and her Mother are being held captive by her father. The way that Helena lived and survived while growing up in the marsh was actually quite amazing and I thoroughly enjoyed her story. Her story from the past and present were both equally compelling to me.

Although, I wouldn’t say that this novel was all that suspenseful for me it was the pacing, setting, writing, and the characters that I found so compelling.

To sum it all up it was a riveting, enjoyable, suspenseful, fast-paced, quick and easy read with a satisfying ending. Highly recommend! This book is definitely going into my favourite reads list for 2017!

All of Brenda and my reviews can be found on our Sister Blog:
https://www.twogirlslostinacouleeread...

This book and I have a history. I first saw it some time ago on NetGalley and requested it immediately. Sadly I was denied but not deterred. I kept looking, hoping for a publisher that would favour me. So that didn’t happen and then one day I saw it on the start reading shelf and snagged it in a heartbeat.

And then I sat down at last to read it and discovered to my horror that it was only a sampler.. Talk about

Yes there is history and it is not all sunshine and lollipops.

Who cares. This story had my attention from the first word and it never let go.

I was born two years into my Mother’s captivity. She was three weeks shy of seventeen. If I had known then, what I do now, things would have been a lot different. I wouldn’t have adored my Father.

Helena grew up in the marsh land of the upper peninsula of Michigan. Deep in the marsh land where she had no contact with anyone for years other than her Father and her Mother. Little did Helena know that her Father had abducted her 14 year old Mother and held her captive lo these many years.

Flash forward and Helena has escaped the marsh, is married and has two girls of her own , when she hears the news announcement that her Father has escaped prison.

Helena has kept her past secret even from her husband. Even so she knows, the authorities will not find her Father. He is too clever by far. No she must do this, track him, on her own, as he has trained her to do.

I was always going to read this story, regardless of what the yard guards had to say. It is unnerving when you stop to think about it, but every perpetrator of every heinous crime ever committed is also someone’s father, brother, mother, son, daughter, whatever. I remember when my girls were young and would find themselves in trouble for one thing or another, when all was said and done, they always looked to me for reassurance that I still loved them and would continue to do so, even if they had been bad. It was easy to give those assurances, while still attempting to instill the right versus wrong moral code you hoped would follow them into adulthood. But in the cold hard light of day, things are not so cut and dried. I don’t believe that that kind of deep sustaining love ever dissipates completely, regardless of the circumstances surrounding someone’s culpability in evil.

The story is told from Helena’s perspective and moves back and forth in time, allowing an in depth look at her childhood and all the events of years past that have coloured and shaped the woman she is today. Interspersed throughout Helena’s story is the fairy tale of The Marsh King’s Daughter as written by Hans Christian Anderson.

Gut wrenching and unputdownable The Marsh King's Daughter is a chilling and intense look at the bonds of love and the human condition. You will not want to miss it.

5 breathtaking, unnerving stars.

I really think that 2017 is fast becoming the year of the Thrillers and the The Marsh King's Daughter is without doubt a smart well thought out and entertaining read and one that I can see becoming a big hit over the summer.
When I read the premise of this Novel it really caught my attention and I couldn't wait to get my hands on it........
'I was born two years into my mother's captivity. She was three weeks shy of seventeen. If I had known then what I do now, things would have been a lot different. I wouldn't have adored my father.'
When notorious child abductor - known as the Marsh King - escapes from a maximum security prison, Helena immediately suspects that she and her two young daughters are in danger.

The book alternates skillfully between Helena's past and present and the reader learns about Helen and her life. Characters are well drawn and the plot is well thought out and chilling in places.
I was a little afraid going into this one that it might be very graphic and while I did find a few of the hunting scenes quite tough reading, I understand the authors need to write these scenes as part of the bigger picture and they can be easily skimmed over if the reader finds them too much.

A really well written novel, chilling, suspenseful, fresh and certainly one I will be recommending to my friends to pack for holidays this summer.

My thanks to Net Galley for the chance to read an advance copy in return for an honest review

What a fabulous premise for a book. A man kidnapping a woman and holding her hostage has been done before. But here, it's the daughter formed from that horrible union, telling the tale years later when her father escapes from prison.

Helena obviously had the oddest of childhoods. Raised in the outback of the UP, she still bear hunts, fishes and makes jellies with cat tails. Her husband has no clue to her background until the state police show up at their door. To say he's pissed is an understatement.

Dionne does a fabulous job of portraying Helena’s childhood. To her, it's normal. As she says, if that's all you know you don't question it. Her mother never bonded with her, so it was towards her father that she was drawn. Even now, there is a true mix of emotions. Dionne does an excellent job of not just describing that blend of love and hate but making you understand it. She weaves the childhood memories with the insights Helena has gained through therapy. To say the writing is strong is an understatement. My hatred of the father was palatable. Helena only wants to capture him and return him to prison. I wanted her to kill him.

Highly recommend this one. One of the best books I've read in 2017. I'm so glad to see she has written other books I can check out.

4.5⭐
Wow! So original. I loved this from the very first page. ❤️

Helena was born to a mother who was abducted as a teenager by a despicable man known as The Marsh King. They lived remotely off the grid in Michigan's Upper Peninsula for close to fifteen years. This is a story told by Helena mostly through flashbacks, now a grown woman married with two children.

I enjoy Helena's character and life on the marsh. Many details on native plants, gathering, and Native American philosophies. I could do with less detail on hunting but it was necessary for their survival.

The Marsh King was incarcerated after the mother-daughter escaped and now he has escaped from prison and killed more innocent lives. He's leaving clues for Helena to track him through lessons he taught her when she was a child. The book got my attention from the get-go and doesn't let go!

My thanks to GR friend & Snag Buddy Jennifer's wonderful review that put this book on my radar.
Read for Book Across America BINGO - Snag A Read For Free Group

The Marsh King’s Daughter by Karen Dionne is a 2017 G.P. Putnam's Sons publication.

Hypnotizing, thrilling, tense, and absolutely riveting!!

I receive many emails from publishers and publicist promoting the latest book releases, but this book kept cropping up across different platforms, which piqued my interest. Then I noticed the rave reviews on Goodreads from trusted friends, and knew I had to see what all the excitement was about.

Although I was eager to start the book, and carefully read the synopsis, I couldn’t have possibly imagined the atmospheric pilgrimage, and adventure I found myself guided through.

The upper peninsula is the perfect setting for this story, which is as much about survival in the wilderness as it is about the psychological abuse, and crimes committed by Jacob Holbrook.

Helena was born into captivity, as her mother was kidnapped at the age of fourteen by Jacob, and forced to live way off the grid, in the marshland. Helena does not know her life is abnormal and sees Jacob has her father, not a monster who is holding them hostage. In fact, she seems to share a very special bond with the man, preferring him over her mother.

When, at the age of twelve, Helena and her mother are rescued, and Jacob is sent to prison. Helena has a very hard time adjusting to civilization, but eventually marries and has two children. However, she keeps her past a secret from her family, until one day her worst fears are realized when Jacob escapes from prison, killing two guards in the process.

Knowing she is the only person who can find him, Helena sets off in search of her father, geared with her special knowledge of how Jacob thinks. She bravely enters a ‘deadliest game’ type of situation with her three- legged dog as her only ally, barreling toward the ultimate showdown with her father, a man she both loves and hates.

It will be survival of the fittest in an unbelievable and utterly absorbing mind game that will keep you right on the edge of your seat from start to finish.

As Helena searches for her father, the story flashes back to her childhood, which goes into vivid detail about how her ‘family’ survived in the marshes, the skills her father taught her, and the psychological hold her father has over her.

The author uses excerpts from the Hans Christian Anderson’s version of ‘The Marsh King’s Daughter’ as a prelude to each chapter, which contains a dose of symbolism that holds poignant meanings to the events taking place in the story.

Her childhood is so deeply ingrained in her consciousness, loving the skills her father taught her and the stories he told her as a child, that she has a very hard time separating the monster from the father, she quite clearly loves. But, we also know it’s a cat and mouse game and only one of them will walk away victorious.

The struggle is physical, it’s emotional, it’s mental, and it’s psychological. The beautiful nature is juxtaposed against the brutality of survival, which is often hard to digest. There are tense scenes of abuse, as well as cruelty to animals, and vivid hunting descriptions that are very disturbing and are difficult passages to read.

Helena is a sympathetic character, which examines the long lasting effects of her isolation, the abuse she didn’t really understand was abuse at the time, and the struggle to move forward, is harrowing, thought provoking, and sad, but she showcases an incredible amount of courage and tenacity, determined to do whatever it takes to save herself and her family.

The author did an amazing job with this stark, realistic, fast paced thriller, combining elements of adventure with deep and profound emotional complexities, making Helena a heroine you will not soon forget.

An amazing, thrilling and oh so dark read!

Helena may look like your average young wife and mother, but she has a past that sets her miles apart from most everyone.

Helena grew up as the daughter of a high-profile kidnapper and his victim. She lived the first 14 years of her life hidden deep in a marsh along with her mother, who was kidnapped at a very young age. And of course Helen’s father, known infamously as the Marsh King. (What a cozy family, huh?)

Years later, learning there has been an escape from the local prison, Helena instinctively knows that the manhunt is on for her father…The Marsh King.

Risking her family and marriage, Helena sets out to track him down on her own. After all, who would know him…. or his depraved ways better than daddy’s little girl Helena.

Told in present and past timelines from Helena’s point of view. Her stories of growing up in the marsh with a love/fear relationship of her father. The character of the Marsh king is depicted in a frighteningly realistic way. Certain parts are monstrously brutal and difficult to read.

I found myself drawn more to the past time line, than the present. I was so curious to see how she was raised, how she viewed her father and eventually how she made it out of the swamp.

Very fast paced, with the intensity building as the chapters flew by. It left me flipping pages (tapping on my kindle) as fast as I could and gasping out loud as more of Helena’s story unfolded. A macabre story that will stay with me for a very long time!

Highly recommend! 4.5*

Karen Dionne develops this powerful novel that will pull the reader into an adventure like few others, injecting emotion and pure cunning into each chapter. Helena has a secret that she has been keeping for many years. She is the offspring of a kidnap victim and her captor. Helena has spent the first dozen years of her life living off the land, knowing nothing else. The isolation was something Helena suspected every child experienced, as she learned how to hunt, trap, and subsist without a lick of electricity. Now grown and having fled years in the past, her father sits in prison for his crimes, as the notoriety of the events has long since deflated. The reader learns of how Helena was forced to reinvent herself and acclimate to life in the world, surrounded by others with their social rules and expectation. She has a family of her own, but has not told them about her sensationalized upbringing in a similar community of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. When word comes out that her father has escaped prison, having killed two guards before fleeing into the woods, Helena has no choice but to tell her husband the truth. While he tries to waylay the shock he feels, Helena saddles him with the added news that she will not go into hiding with them, but has chosen to scour the woods for her father, in hopes of capturing him for the state troopers. What follows is a narrative that alternates between the present and Helena’s struggles to locate her father, who has taught her everything she knew about these woods, and flashbacks to her growing up in an isolated cabin, having no idea that she was a victim of a heinous crime. Dionne pushes both stories along and shows the slow revelation that Helena made as she came to realize that the man she idolized was nothing but a sadistic control freak. As Helena tries to find her father, the past and present collide, forcing her to play a deadly game of cat and mouse, where only one will survive. Trouble is, both parties are prepare to hunt the other until all that remains is a bleeding corpse. Brilliantly paced and presented, fans across the board will flock to this piece that explores epiphanies and slow maturation with just the right amount of thrill factor to keep the reader guessing.

Having never read any Karen Dionne previously, I was not sure what to expect. While reviews and ‘currently reading’ presence is strong for this book, I cannot always take the insights of others as my own. However, for the second novel in a row, I am pleased that I was pulled-in my the whirlpool of Goodreads popularity a novel has received. Dionne does an amazing job of using the blissful ignorance of young Helena to allow her to absorb all her father wants to teach her, only to turn the tables in the present-day manhunt that takes place to locate him. The reader can see growth in both incarnations of Helena, while also understanding the depth of her victimhood throughout the narrative. Dionne lays it all out on the table, allowing the reader to weigh in and determine if Helena was a victim or simply a product of her isolated upbringing. Adding numerous layers in the form of characters, real and imagined, the story takes on a new depth as the narrative bounced between both time periods. Dionne thickens the plot and the overall story by paralleling happenings in the novel with the fairy tale of the same name penned by Hans Christian Andersen many years before. Brilliant to be able to contrast and compare, as pieces of the tale appear to begin various chapters. The story has crumbs of uniqueness as well as the typical manhunt aspects, though the delivery is so flawless that the reader cannot help but feel drawn in until the final pages. Some will bemoan that the book is falsely labelled a thriller, but I think that if enough time is taken reflecting on the plot and the building narrative, it is clear that there are scores of thriller moments on which the reader can only posit where things will go next. Surely filled with research and dedication, Dionne has blown me away with the attention to detail in this piece. I cannot think of the last time I was so impressed by a story that is so simplistic and yet so complex at the same time.

Kudos, Madam Dionne for offering up this idea. I will have to find time to read more of your work, as you are both a wordsmith and master of slow and steady plot development.

Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/

Wow, wow, wow. I was riveted by this book, completely glued to the pages! THE MARSH KING’S DAUGHTER was more than just gripping psychological suspense; it was also a compelling blend of literary fiction and unique coming of age story.

This book tells the unusual life story of Helena Pelletier. She’s a wife, mother, and small business owner, but at one time her life was very strange, and growing up she didn’t realize it. The father whom she adored was actually a monster, a cruel psychopath who kidnapped her mother when she was a teenager. The three of them lived in an isolated cabin in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, completely cutoff from the rest of the world, until Helena was twelve years old. Now, after spending many years in prison, her father has escaped, and the only person cunning and skilled enough to track such as man is Helena herself.

Helena’s story alternates between the present as she hunts for her father, and the past when they lived alone in the marshlands. Moving between the two time periods bumped up the suspense. I was equally fascinated by both! As the reader, you already know that Helena will be separated from her father, but how? What was their life like before she knew the truth? What was it like for Helena to join the “real world,” and eventually be compelled to hunt him after his escape? My need for these answers made this a read-in-one-sitting situation!

THE MARSH KING’S DAUGHTER is a beautifully written book and a nail-biter at the same time. I loved it. Helena, her mother, and their haunting story will stick with me for a long time. Highly recommended.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book through Penguin’s First to Read Program in exchange for an honest review.

4.5
Well, what a story! This novel will have you at the edge of your seat. This is the fastest I've read a book in ages!

What does it say that I've recommended this for two real world book clubs, have read it twice, and am now renting a little cabin out on stilts over the marshes of Lake Pontchartrain to host book club?

If you've ever loved an imperfect parent or grew up amidst dysfunction that seemed 'normal' - until you were old enough to know better, that is -I think you'll relate well to The Marsh King's Daughter. For those who enjoyed Jeannette Walls' memoir The Glass Castle, you too may fall for this book.

**The audio version is now available for free from your public library on Overdrive, and the narration is absolutely outstanding.

Upon overnight reflection, I'm bumping this to five stars and am putting it on my favorites shelf. EDIT: two weeks after the fact, I went ahead and bought a hard copy to keep! The fact that this contemporary and chilling story ties to an obscure Scandinavian fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen - and I won't say who it is that recalls that old fable to our protagonist - was just perfect. Absolutely perfect.

The core story was completely believable and is a testament to the quiet courage of women who've been taken and survived. It shows the complex human psychology at work in a family unit and the glories of the natural world. Brutality is juxtaposed against beauty, and regret sings a single note that lasts for the entire novel.

The story also features a character study of one of the strongest female leads I've run across in some time. She is human and fallible like the rest of us, but her true Achille's Heel is the love she holds for her narcissistic, violent father. And who among us didn't love Daddy at one time?

The daughter of a sociopath grows up not having any clue that he is, in fact, a child-abductor and rapist. He treats the girl's mother - his captive for 14 years - like a slave while his daughter, a girl who is his spitting image, remains the apple of his eye. He is sadistic with the child, we come to learn, but she believes that she has earned punishment just as she sees her mother with the same learned disdain as her father.

For now, I'm giving this 4.5 stars but may bump it up as the book settles in my mind. Towards the end, the daughter has a streak of Chuck Norris, MacGuyver, and just about anybody portrayed by Bruce Willis in a movie...it rather pulled me out of the story in distraction.

Stillhouse Lake is a book I just finished for book club this week, and it too featured a woman whose loved one ended up being a killer. I'm not sure if this is some new trend in fiction, but as this beautiful and suspenseful book showed, that trend can be both touching and tense.

Here is the link to The Marsh King's Daughter - the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. Dark and lovely, just like this book.

Once you finish this outstanding story, reading this short fable will resonate.

http://hca.gilead.org.il/marsh_ki.html

4.5 stars

The strongest part of this novel is the titular character. Her name is now Helena Pelletier, but she is also, even more so, the Marsh King’s Daughter. And while the plot is suspenseful and the revelations make it a type of psychological thriller, it is the character development, revealed through the perceptive, evocative, and striking language of the author, that packs the biggest punch. For me, it read as a coming of age story, a child’s growth to themselves, outside the boundaries of their parents’ influence and control. As this is a crime novel, this path has a rather dark shade. Yet what the book is about is Helena’s desire not to be defined by her father’s actions and the label ‘the Marsh King’s Daughter’ given to her by the voracious media after her escape. From her birth to the now, she tells us the story of how she was first made and how she remade herself, with the events in this book providing the final conclusion to her development. It’s this that makes it much more than your average crime novel.

Highly recommended.

ARC via Netgalley

Wow! What a book! It took me just two days to read this. I haven't been this captivated by a book in a long time!

I'm not going to summarize the story. The blurb explains this book well enough.

I grew up with a father who hunted and fished, but I'm not either of those. Well, I am a hunter, I suppose, but I use binoculars and a spotting scope. I’m an outdoorsy, nature-loving person. I enjoy wildlife watching and have spent hours upon hours in forests and fields. I understand the relationship between predator and prey. Therefore, the fact that this takes place in an isolated wilderness area is interesting to me. I am not bothered by how this family lived off the land with no contact with the outside world. That is not to say there weren't things that shocked me. This is, after all, a psychological suspense story, and I could see what Helena could not. Just be warned that this book contains several triggers that I expect will affect a variety of sensitivities.

***THIS AUTHOR HAS A NEW BOOK COMING OUT 8/4/20, READ THIS ONE FIRST, YOU'LL WANT TO READ HER NEXT, "THE WICKED SISTER" ***

I’m usually not a fan of books where there is a “chase” type of situation, they can get to be predictable. This book, however, is definitely the exception to this.

The plot of this story can be told quickly. A young girl, age 14, is abducted from a small town and never found. We later find that she was held for many years and had a daughter who was aged 12 when she was finally rescued and the man who abducted and raped her was put in prison.

The marsh king’s daughter, named Helena, is still living close to where her father is imprisoned. Her grandparents left her the property and she had her father’s home demolished and is currently living in a mobile home with her husband and two daughters. She hears an announcement on the radio of an escaped prisoner and soon discovers it is her father. She decides that the only one who will be able to find him is her because he trained her in hiding and tracking techniques.

We get to know all of the characters very well, the prose is exceptional. I did find myself eagerly turning pages to find out what would happen when Helena met up with her father. One small problem that I had with the story was that if I were Helena I would have left that area and gone as far away as possible when I was old enough. Even though she did inherit property I still had a problem believing that she would stick around.

The author is an extremely talented writer, her descriptions of the plants and fauna of their area in the marsh were so well described I could definitely picture it. I live in Wisconsin, not that far, and I had no knowledge of these extensive marshlands in the UP of Michigan. The love for the marshlands may have been a reason that Helena would stay, she loved that part of her childhood, when her father was teaching her about something in nature.

The story is a unique one and the characters are outstanding. I think that I would put this book in the genre of literary fiction rather than mystery/thriller, because the only mystery is what happens in the end. At any rate, pick up this book, you will have a great read. Oh and the cover is gorgeous, completely reels the reader in.

I received an ARC of this novel from the publishers, thank you.

4.5

This one came in from the library the day before I was leaving town and I was so excited to get it. I wasn't sure how I could read it in a day along with the other things I had to do. Well once I started reading I couldn't put it down and everything else just waited. It became a very quick read for me.

The Marsh King’s daughter is a heart pounding, compelling, interesting and unique character driven psychological thriller. When we first meet Helena she is happy and living with her family but news that her convicted father has escaped from prison has Helena is a heart stopping game and race against time to stop her father from reaching her family.

As Helena is racing against time we learn from flashbacks about her childhood being raised in captivity by her father. Innocent and naive, young Helena is oblivious to the fact that her and her Mother are being held captive. We see how she pieces together who and what her father really is. We see her go from adoring her father to realizing how controlling and evil he is and seeing how her weak cold mother is controlled by her father to understanding her Mother’s love for her.

Karen Dionne has created some compelling characters here that had me feeling very different emotions towards each. I loved Helena and her determination to stop her father. I felt sorry and heartbroken for her broken Mother and I loathed her Father.

Just a heads up there is a hunting scene that I was unprepared for that was a bit disturbing and I didn't like that.

The Marsh King’s Daughter was a highly engaging, entertaining, fast paced race against time for me, that I am very glad I finished in time. I highly recommend.

All of Norma’s and my reviews can be found on our sister blog:
http://www.twogirlslostinacouleereadi...

What a gruesome story!

Trigger warnings: Abduction; rape, extreme violence, narcissism, sociapathic and mental health issues (depression).

This was very engrossing and suspenseful, and, at first, the off-the-grid life that Helena still missed so much sounded pretty idyllic, but everything that was rotten in Denmark soon started to fester and ooze to the surface of this twisted tale.

Jacob raised his daughter in his own image, and those last chapters only reinforced my belief that the apple did not fall far from the tree in this case. She was brutal to her mother, even after their "escape" and that self-imposed "witness protection-like" abandonment of her when she turned eighteen was entirely selfish. Helena's narcissism was totally obvious at that point. In Helena's defense, I will concede that her horrific acts were usually altruistic. She had, somehow, developed a moral compass. Perhaps Nature and her father's Ojibwe teachings had taught her something that Jacob totally disregarded in his own rampant narcissism?

Will I read any more books by this author? I doubt it. The transition from light to dark was not seamless (how much of Helena's childhood recollections were really as idyllic as she had portrayed them?) and it was difficult to accept Helena's about face towards the end. I could not "refocus the lens," as I am so fond of saying. I felt very disturbed and uneasy for a long while after I turned the very last page: this story gave me the creeps, big time! I'm rating this one a 3.4 out of 5 because that gratuitous twist/revelation towards the end seemed so unnecessary - and just when I was getting to like Helena!
Sometimes I think authors add this sort of gruesome detail to ramp up the shock value - I figure it must sell more books, right?! (Ugh!)

I won this book as a first reads giveaway and I'd like to thank the publisher and author for the book.

I know this has received many 4 and 5 star ratings and I'm in the minority. It was a good book. The writing especially is very good. I just couldn't warm to the story. It was a bit more descriptive for my liking and drawn out a bit slow. I thought the premise of the story held a lot of promise. The story of Helena, a child born in captivity. Her mother was kidnapped at 14 years old by a deranged man and held captive in a remote cabin in the woods of Michigan's upper peninsula. The story goes back and forth in time; as Helena describes her upbringing and eventual escape, and the present time where she has just learned her father has escaped from prison.

I couldn't warm to Helena and at times down right just did not like her. I was surprised that I did not sympathize with her much. Maybe I wasn't supposed to. She was indeed a product of her captivity..just as dangerous as her father...both true hunters. Perhaps it was the "hunting" tone of the whole story that did not sit well with me. I know many others have enjoyed this one. I think it was just not my style of book.

⭐⭐⭐.5/5 If you liked Where The Crawdads Sing or The Glass Castle, The Marsh King's Daughter might be your next psychologically suspenseful read. The Marsh Kind's Daughter is also being made into a movie set to premiere June 7th, 2023, at a Tribeca Movie Festival!

THOUGHTS:
- When I think of both of those books, I think of deep familial traumas and women who have survived against all odds. Sometimes against the odds in the wilderness, amidst horrific familial situations - but in the end - they come out stronger and willing to fight for a life free of terror and pain.

- I really cannot imagine what it would be like to have your whole world be so small as a marsh in the backwoods of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and limited to just two people? Or to grow up with the parents that our heroine Helena did. It's appalling what humans will put other humans through.. and books like this always remind me to be grateful for my life!

- I'm also reminded while reading this that somewhere people are trying to live lives who actually have parents who've committed horrible crimes. And how their lives must have been ripped apart? These are the sometimes forgotten victims of the tragedies that psychopaths inflict on humanity.

- Writing Style: In many of the flashback sections, I skimmed because they were so gory and just a bit too vi0lent for me to read. However, Dionne's writing style really gave you a true perspective of how someone could hate and love someone so horrible at the same time. It's tough to read in many places, but at the same time, it gives such careful insight that I did my best to read through the parts that weren't as bad.

NOTES:
- The Marsh King's Daughter is full of content warnings.. abus3 (many different kinds), violence and murd3r

↑↑ April 25th, Update ↑↑

I'm massively burnt out on fantasy novels right now, so I'm picking up more thrillers!

The Marsh King's Daughter is being made into a movie, so I thought I'd pick this one because I know my husband, (who doesn't read), will watch the movie, and then we can chat about it the same way we're doing for The Last Thing He Told Me. 😂😂

↑↑ April 20th, Update ↑↑