Review: Who Killed My Daughter?

Author: Lois Duncan

Genre: True Crime (1992)

About: The author's search for her 18-year-old daughter's murderer.

Descriptive Words: Hit man or random shooting?, Vietnamese boyfriend, car accident/insurance scam, drug dealing, psychic, unsolved.

Thoughts: At first I thought the author was kooky when she began hiring psychics to solve her daughter's murder because the police were of no help. But after several psychics "saw" the same images, and because of my own frustration towards the police and my sympathy for the mother, I realized that she had to become her own detective. I probably would have hired psychics too! I enjoyed the story. It's hard to believe her killer is still on the loose.

Source: Bought at book sale (Yay, I finally got a book off my tbr shelf!)

Why I Chose: I love True Crime and hadn't read any lately.

Recommend? Yes

Rating: 4/5

Review: Not Lost Forever: My Story of Survival

Not Lost Forever: My Story of Survival

by Carmina Salcido

My Synopsis

Memoir about a 3-year-old girl in Sonoma, California, whose father murdered her mother, grandmother, two young aunts (8 and 12), two sisters (1 and 4), two men from his work, and cut her throat and left her for dead in a dump.

My Thoughts

The story is not only about the murders, but like the subtitle says, it's Carmina's story of survival. And boy what a doozy this is. Besides losing almost her entire family, her grandfather gives her up for adoption after the murders because he doesn't feel he can take care of her. The family who adopts her follows a cult-like, rigid Catholic religion, and Carmina is treated like a complete outsider. What she goes through then, and even after she turns 18, is unbelievable. I don't want to give too much away, but her father is on death row (the search for him after the murders is a whole other story), and he claims he is remorseful and wants her to visit him.

Unbelievable story. Steve Jackson, who helped her write the story, did a great job. The only part I didn't like was how Carmina would sometimes refer to her father as "Ramon" and in the very next sentence refer to him as "my dad." So I kept thinking, wait, who is Ramon?

Do I Recommend?

Yes, if you like true-crime. A lot of people don't, so I don't imagine many of you will be rushing out to get this book :)

Source: Library

My Rating

4/5