May 13, 2025
Favourite Daughter, by Morgan Dick
No one’s got their shit together in Morgan Dick’s debut novel, FAVOURITE DAUGHTER, the story of two women who share a father but who’ve never met each other. When her estranged dad dies, Mickey learns that she’s to inherit his estate with one proviso: she must complete seven sessions of therapy. And when she walks into the therapist’s office, it’s Arlo she encounters, her father’s other daughter, each woman with no idea who the other one really is, or that they have a connection at all. Which means that Arlo is technically violating no ethical guidelines as she takes on her sister as her patient, but maybe there is something to the sibling dynamic and boundaries have never been Arlo’s strong point anyway, years of trying to save her alcoholic and disappointing father leaving her prone to becoming tangled up in other people’s messes, and soon the siblings are as complicatedly invested in each other as true siblings can be.
Although even without the genetic connection, Mickey would be a formidable challenge to a therapist. The centre of her world is her job as a kindergarten teacher, a job that gives her life shape and meaning—she’s been cut off by her mother, and doesn’t have any friends—but a bad call on the job and the fact of her drinking means that Mickey’s job might be taken away from her forever. After years of addiction, can Mickey finally make meaningful change in her life? And how different is she from Arlo anyway, who appears put together on the surface but whose security is just as fragile as Mickey’s is, and who has made her own mistakes? Or the very slutty lawyer, Tom, who’s settling their father’s estate, or their long-suffering mothers, or Mickey’s very weird neighbour with the luxury cat?
Each of them is a complete and utter mess, and yet also sparkling with some goodness, and wholly worthy of love, which is the charm of this novel, which is sometimes sad, sometimes deadpan, and ever surprising.
