Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth

Three women that grew together have to face the police when a body is found under their old foster care home.

Author

Diego Dunne
March 26, 2025

Hey, it’s Diego.

I finished reading Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth this week.

And I’m here to tell you all about it.

Let me give you my spoiler-free, unbiased review.

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Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth Review

Darling Girls tells the story of three foster sisters—Jessica, Norah, and Alicia—who have to confront their traumatic past with the authorities when human remains are discovered beneath their former foster home.

Trigger Warnings: child abuse (emotional and physical), neglect, drug addiction, gaslighting, sexual exploitation, foster care trauma, rape.

This domestic thriller unfolds mainly in a town in Australia with most of it happening inside a single home.

Domestic thrillers: a subset of psychological thrillers that happen in a “domestic” location. This can be a family home or small town but can also be a hospital, prison, etc.

The writing is straightforward, keeping the focus on the characters and the plot. While it’s not richly descriptive, it gets the job done, blending dark, emotional moments with occasional humor.

Hepworth alternates between the perspectives of the three women and an unnamed narrator in therapy sessions. With the timeline jumping between the past and present as details of the investigation are uncovered. If you’re patient with the slow start, it then picks up the pace, and you get to know the characters really well (and they are the gem of this book).

The book is structured so that we uncover details as the investigation progresses, but it’s very character-driven and even though they are all deeply flawed, I did get to enjoy each one as they processed the information in their own ways.

The themes revolve around psychological child abuse in the foster care system. However, there’s also resilience, humor and hope woven into the narrative, keeping it from feeling bleak. There’s even a touch of romance (some of it LGBTQ+), though it remains a minor subplot.

So, what about the ending? (No spoilers obviously)

I love my stories to wrap up nicely, with a neat little bow at the end. I like to read a cathartic scene where everything our characters have been through finally pays off physically and emotionally. Then a denouement in another chapter (or chapters) following the characters decompress where things are resolved and I’m left delighted at how well things played out at the end, every plot thread resolved.

This book has one main problem, and it’s reflected in the ratings on Amazon and Goodreads, and it’s that although the ending wraps things up well, and we get a detailed look at what happens to the characters after the main events in the denouement, Hepworth added a twist towards the end for the sake of a twist that undercut its own story. Which is a shame.

Overall, I wouldn’t call this one perfect—it hits some of my dislikes, like I struggle to read through child endangerment of any kind, and that rug pull at the end left a bitter taste in my mouth. But the characters and the sense of danger lurking throughout made up for it.

Similar Books to Darling Girls

  • The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth

  • The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell

  • The Chain by Adrian McKinty

That’s all for this week.

See you next time.

— Diego Dunne

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