Voters decide "Like Mother, Like Daughter" is the August read for the CBS New York Book Club
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A mystery about a NYC mother and daughter is the latest book for Club Calvi
It's time to get your copy of "Like Mother, Like Daughter" by Kimberly McCreight. The new novel was just voted as Readers' Choice for the CBS New York Book Club.
The book is about a New York City mother and daughter and how their complicated relationship takes a dangerous turn when the mom disappears and her secret life is exposed.
In a video message to readers, McCreight said the book is also a love story, as the mother and daughter try to find their way back to each other before it's too late.
Read along with Club Calvi for the next four weeks, leading up to our virtual book club meetup in September.
The CBS New York Book Club focuses on books connected to the Tri-State Area in their plots and/or authors. The books may contain adult themes.
"Like Mother, Like Daughter" by Kimberly McCreight
From the publisher: When Cleo, a student at NYU, arrives late for dinner at her childhood home in Brooklyn, she finds food burning in the oven and no sign of her mother, Kat. Then Cleo discovers her mom's bloody shoe under the sofa. Something terrible has happened.
But what? The polar opposite of Cleo, whose "out of control" emotions and "unsafe" behavior have created a seemingly unbridgeable rift between mother and daughter, Kat is the essence of Park Slope perfection: a happily married, successful corporate lawyer. Or so Cleo thinks.
Kat has been lying. She's not just a lawyer; she's her firm's fixer. She's damn good at it, too. Growing up in a dangerous group home taught her how to think fast, stay calm under pressure, and recognize a real threat when she sees one. And in the days leading up her disappearance, Kat has become aware of multiple threats: demands for money from her unfaithful soon-to-be ex-husband; evidence that Cleo has slipped back into a relationship that's far riskier than she understands; and menacing anonymous messages from her past—all of which she's kept hidden from Cleo.
Kimberly McCreight lives in Brooklyn.
"Like Mother, Like Daughter" by Kimberly McCreight (ThriftBooks) $21
Excerpt: "Like Mother, Like Daughter" by Kimberly McCreight
As soon as you begin to show, the lies start. They will be well- meaning, all of them. Friends, family, doctors, total strangers— pretty much anyone who spies your pregnant belly will tell you:
Don't worry, you'll know what to do when the time comes. Don't worry, your maternal instincts will kick right in.
Don't worry, your body will bounce right back. Don't worry, you're going to be an amazing mother. Don't worry, it's not as hard as it looks.
Don't worry, being a mother is the most rewarding job in the world.
Don't worry, you will love them more than you ever thought possible.
The last one is true, if dangerously oversimplified.
It is indeed a ferocious love you feel the second you hold your child, hot and wriggling, against your naked chest. You will die to protect that child. You suspect, uncomfortably, that you could also kill. You have never thought of yourself as this person before—wild, animalistic. It will make you feel both powerful and afraid.
This is your first true introduction to motherhood, this study in contradictions.
And then there is the cost of this boundless love that no one warns you about: the worry and sleepless nights. The fear that they will get sick or grow up sad or be forever lonely. And that it will be your fault. Or that someday they might stop returning your calls. After all, just because you love them without condition does not obligate them to love you back.
Oh, and you will get so much of it wrong. Partly because there is no right answer, to any of it. And on that rare occasion when you do knock it out of the park? That will only make you believe that other mothers must be doing it right all the time. You will commit to trying harder.
You will try until your eyes burn and your arms ache. Until your heart crumbles to dust.
You will do whatever it takes. Even when you don't know what that is. Especially then. And get ready, because this will be your job forever, this fixing of everything, including the things that cannot be fixed.
For as long as you both shall live.
THE DAY OF
Our brownstone looks beautiful, lit up a warm gold in the fading April light. Homey and pristine Park Slope perfection, thanks to my mom, of course. God forbid anything she does ever be less than perfect. Except here I am, frozen on the corner, half a block from the house where I grew up, consumed by dread. And this is not exactly a new feeling.
I could turn around right now and get on the subway. Head back to NYU, to that party in my dorm that will probably start soon. To Will. But there was something about the way my mom reached out this time. She insisted she needed to talk to me in person, right now. That's not new. But then she said that she understood why I wouldn't want to come, that she was asking me, begging me, to please come anyway. And she sounded so . . . sincere—and that was new. Of course, it went downhill from there. In the past twenty-four hours, she's fallen back on her tried-and-true method: brute force. Take the messages I got on the train a little while ago—Are you on your way? Are you on the train? Are you almost here? Texting with my mom can be like fac- ing a firing squad.
A car horn blasts on Prospect Park West, and I dart across the street. At the top of the steps, I ring the bell and wait. If my mom is in her office at the back, she might not hear it. And of course I've forgotten my keys.
My phone buzzes in my hand: And?
Will. My breath catches.
Not sure what time yet. I check my phone. It's already six-thirty.
I'll text on my way back?
We're hanging out, that's all. Hooking up. Simple.
OFC, he replies after a beat. And there is that flutter in my chest again. Okay, so maybe it is a little more than hooking up.
I ring the bell again and again. Still nothing.
I send a text: HELLO? Been here for 15 minutes.
It's only been five minutes, but seeing as my mom got me back to Brooklyn under duress—emotional extortion—the least she could do is answer the door. Also, I'm freezing here on the stoop in my white ribbed tank top and low-rise jeans. Of course, that'll be a whole thing—Where's your jacket? Where are the rest of your clothes? Forget about it when she spots my new eyebrow piercing.
I pound on the door, which pops open the second my knuckles meet the wood.
"Mom?" I call, stepping inside the big open space. Living room and dining room to the left, kitchen to the right. "You left the door—"
Something's burning. A saucepan is on the stove, the front burner blazing, the outside of the pot blackened from the flame. I rush over to turn it off, grab a dish towel to toss the pot into the sink, and turn on the faucet. A cloud of steam rises as tap water sizzles into the now-empty pot.
There's an open box of couscous on the counter, next to a neat pile of chopped green beans. A half-empty glass of water on the island. "Mom!" I shout.
Popping and hissing noises are coming from the oven. When I open the door, I'm blasted by a wall of heat and gray smoke. The baking pan I yank out is filled with blackened rocks that I'm guessing used to be chicken.
"The food is burning!" The smoke alarm starts to screech. "Shit."
I'm about to climb up on a stool to shut it off, when I hear a loud noise—thump, thump, thump. It's coming from the direction of my mom's office. S***.
"Mom!"
The thumping stops.
I press my body against the wall as I make my way down the hall. But when I poke my head into the office doorway, it's empty. My mom's laptop, I think her work one, is on the floor near the door, which is weird. But otherwise, it's immaculate as always.
The thumping starts up again. I realize it's coming through the wall, from the adjacent brownstone. George and Geraldine's house—or just George's now, since Geraldine died. George was once a famous doctor, a neurosurgeon, but he has Alzheimer's now. My mom tries to keep an eye on him, brings him groceries sometimes, that kind of thing. For sure, George does some weird stuff over in that house all alone. Right now, it sounds like he's pounding on the walls. He used to do that sometimes when I was in high school and he wanted me and my friends to keep it down.
The smoke alarm is still going off. That's probably it.
I return to the kitchen, jump up on the stool to hit the reset button. The alarm finally stops. A second later, so does George's pounding.
I look past the kitchen island to the long dining room table, the living room beyond. Spotless.
"What the hell is going on?" I whisper. My mom is many aggravating things, but she's not the kind of person to disappear. I spy something under the sofa, then jump down from the stool for a closer look. It's one of my mom's standard-issue light gray canvas flats—very plain, very expensive. When I pull it out, I see that the side of the shoe is smeared with a reddish brown streak, a few fingers wide. Turning back toward the kitchen, I notice the broken glass on the floor, the shards fanned out, glittering in a pool of what looks to be water. There's also another shiny circle on the hardwood floor. Closer to the end of the island, it's about
the size of a dinner plate, the liquid a thicker consistency than what's under the glass. When I head over and crouch down, I can see that it's a similar reddish brown to what's on the shoe. Oh my God. It's blood.
I drop the shoe. My hand trembles as I tug my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans.
"Hey!" my dad answers. "Walking off the plane!"
And for a split second I think, Oh, good, Mom and I won't have to eat alone after all. Like the world hasn't just exploded. I look over at the puddle again. Blood. That's definitely what that is.
"Dad, I think something's happened to Mom."
Excerpted From LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER by Kimberly McCreight, published by Knopf, an imprint of the Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Bear One Holdings, LLC.
