What is this about: Lily is a ninja, set on her path of protecting women and children when her sister was murdered. The Ninja Daughter sees Lily begin to confront herself and what she has become while exposing a real estate scam that would rock a city. But it’s also more intimate than that.
What else is this about?: What possesses a woman to go hunting for her sister’s killer? To go out to help abused women and children? Lily’s life has been on hold for so long, that the Ninja Daughter is the beginning of an exhalation — of her confronting things she should have years ago.
Blurb
An action-packed thriller about a Chinese-Norwegian modern-day ninja with family issues who fights the Los Angeles Ukrainian mob, sex traffickers, and her own family to save two desperate women and an innocent child.
After her sister is raped and murdered, Lily Wong dedicates her life and ninja skills to the protection of women. But her mission is complicated. Not only does she live above the Chinese restaurant owned by her Norwegian father and inspired by the recipes of her Chinese mother, but she has to hide her true self from her Hong Kong tiger mom is already disappointed at her less than feminine ways, and who would be horrified if she knew what she had become.
But when a woman and her son she escorted safely to an abused women’s shelter return home to dangerous consequences, Lily is forced to not only confront her family and her past, but team up with a mysterious―and very lethal―stranger to rescue them.
The Ninja Daughter is one of those books where I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.
I mean, the book begins with Lily escaping torture, which kind of sets the tone for the rest of the book. She is determined to help a woman and her son, but she cannot help them if the woman, Kateryna doesn’t want to be helped. After escaping, Lily returns to the refuge where she left Kateryna and her son, Ilya only to find her returned to her abusive husband. As much as Lily wants to, she can’t help Kateryna face up to her fears and who her husband is.
From there, The Ninja Daughter introduces us to how Lily picks up her next case, the next woman to help. We learn more about how she works, how she learned her skills — and her family. Her mother, her Baba (father) and, not nearly enough about Rose. Rose is the spectre that looms over everything in death. Life had to go on for the family, but Rose is always there.
Lily’s next case involves protecting Mia, a woman who reported an attempted rape and you can guess exactly how the press portrayed her right? That’s what catches Lily’s eye, but as it turns out Mia is a small player in a bigger game and nothing about her is what it seems. Slowly Lily begins to put the threads of this case together, until she comes face to a face with the man that attacked Mia, and sees herself in him — in his ruthless efficiency in killing anyone who stands in his way.
That realisation is the something that Lily needed, I think, to understand herself and her parents, though she probably needed to give them more credit that she did. She has them in their boxes in her head, but neither one is as naieve about her as she thinks. That she lets her father into her world, even a little bit — and that he doesn’t ask her to change — is an interesting dynamic. It made me wonder if she never truly realised what her parents went through when Rose was murdered — and that Lily was so focused on finding her killer, she missed her parents entirely.
When we’re focused, we all see only that which we think is important. Her mother’s seems to be the quintessential Hong Kong Tiger Mom, who told her to study, not to worry about her looks too much and yet, years later is setting her daughter up with a nice young man, with the right background and who knows her family well. In short, the man, Daniel, is everything she never wanted, but here again, we see the beginnings of Lily recognising the changes in herself — in enjoying herself with Daniel in a way she never thought she would.
The peeks of Lily beyond being a ninja daughter is what kept me engrossed in this. Don’t get me wrong, the action is top notch, and I can see how the cases she works are going to be soooo good. But who is Lily beyond being the Ninja Daughter — that is going to be the best mystery to find out.
You had me at ‘Lily is a ninja’ . . . A Ninja! You always seem to find a book with a theme that really sparks my curiosity, Verushka! And yes, now I’m quite curious about the mystery surrounding Lily . . . Well done, you, hehe
*blushes* Thanks Silvia 🙂 Lily is so much more wonderfully complex, and her family played a far more impt part than I expected. I liked too that she was examining herself and her parents differently.
Yes, please!
It’s fantastic!
Sounds intense, but I love the whole concept of a justice seeking ninja.
Lily is fantastic!
Ninja Daughter? I’m totally in! 😀
She is so good *so good*!!
A ninja you say? Count me in! Lily sounds like a fantastic character too. I love them complicated like that.
She is so wonderfully complex, and honestly the ninja part? Is just one aspect that intrigues me about her.