Early Reader Review: The Someday Daughter by Ellen O'Clover

Source: From the Publisher for review. This in no way alters my opinion or review.

The Someday Daughter by Ellen O'Clover

Publisher: HarperTeen
Publication Date:  February 20, 2024 

 

Format: Hardback

Rating:

Goodreads Synopsis: 

From the critically acclaimed author of Seven Percent of Ro Devereux comes another nuanced, heartrending, and ultimately healing novel, about a rising college freshman forced to spend a summer with the self-help superstar mother she’s never felt truly connected to.

Years before Audrey St. Vrain was born, her mother, Camilla, shot to fame with Letters to My Someday Daughter, a self-help book encouraging women to treat themselves with the same love and care they’d treat their own daughters. While the world considers Audrey lucky to have Camilla for a mother, the truth is that Audrey knows a different side of being the someday daughter. Shipped off to boarding school when she was eleven, she feels more like a promotional tool than a member of Camilla’s family.

Audrey is determined to create her own identity aside from being Camilla’s daughter, and she’s looking forward to a prestigious summer premed program with her boyfriend before heading to college and finally breaking free from her mother’s world. But when Camilla asks Audrey to go on tour with her to promote the book’s anniversary, Audrey can’t help but think that this is the last, best chance to figure out how they fit into each other’s lives—not as the someday daughter and someday mother, but as themselves, just as they are.

What Audrey doesn’t know is that spending the summer with Camilla and her tour staff—including the disarmingly honest, distressingly cute video intern, Silas—will upset everything she’s so carefully planned for her life.

Review: 

Somehow this author knows how to just rip out my heart and stomp on it... this book was emotionally intense. 

The Someday Daughter is about teenage girl named Audrey, who has been living her life trying to live up to her mother's expectations... and really trying to get her to see her.  Her mother, is a famous author and wellness speaker, gaining her fandom from her book "Letters to My Someday Daughter". This summer she asked Audrey to do the 25 year anniversary tour with her. She is hoping to build more of a relationship with her daughter, but it seems a little late. Audrey has hope that this will be a worthwhile trip, especially because she is giving up SO much to be there.

Audrey hates it here... she is trying to find love from her standoff-ish mother and cannot find it. She has lost her place in a prestigious summer med program for her pre-college month and things are just not going as she planned. Her world is crumbling around her, and she doesn't know how to handle anything. I wanted so strongly to shake her mother and hold Audrey. The mother/daughter relationship is so strange and everyone experiences it differently but I think everyone will feel for both these characters strongly... in a lot of ways.  

Audrey was frightfully real and vulnerable. She is an overachiever who cannot take rejection, doesn't have good coping or stress mechanisms and just needs a caring mother to help her along.  Camilla, her mother, is distant, mostly detached, and a perfectionist in other ways, and has a hard time connecting with her duaghter. There were a number of other characters that added to the complexity of their relationship as well, some interns, a boyfiend, dad, and Audrey's mentor Dr. Stone. There was also a twist that I wish I didn't see coming, but did. It was an interesting one, but I am not sure if helped with the overall growth of the primary characters.

I really liked the focus this book took on that relationship but also about growing up and learning about yourself and how you mold and change as you grow. I wish there was more closure in the end and more healing shown but overall this was a great read.

While the book was an emotional roller-coaster, I enjoyed it so much. I recommend to anyone looking for books about moms and teenage daugthers... just know that you might cry, scream, and fling the book a few times along the way.