Is Peacock's New Series The Good Daughter Based on a Book?
The Peacock limited series starring Rose Byrne and Meghann Fahy unfolds like a quality page-turner.
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Key Takeaways
- The Good Daughter is a Peacock limited series based on Karin Slaughter’s 2017 bestselling crime novel of the same name, centered on two estranged sisters confronting the long-term effects of violence and a new murder case in rural Georgia.
- Karin Slaughter, known for Georgia-set thrillers like Cop Town and Pretty Girls, draws inspiration from Southern culture and the real-life impact of crime on families and communities.
- Slaughter personally adapted The Good Daughter for television, writing all six episodes and executive producing the series, marking her first major television writing role.
The Good Daughter, Peacock’s new original limited series, joins the streaming network’s already deep bench of engrossing dramas about resilience and the complexity of family. It stars Rose Byrne and Meghann Fahy as estranged, adult sisters, Samantha and Charlotte “Charlie” Quinn who reunite to aid their ailing father Rusty's (Brendan Gleeson) defense case involving a high school student accused of murder.
An intimate story that spans 20 years of the Quinn family, The Good Daughter examines the ongoing repercussions of a single night of violence in their rural town of Pikeville, Georgia that forever upended their lives, and now reverberates in the fabric of this current tragedy.
The Good Daughter debuts November 12 exclusively on Peacock, and features the lauded storytelling of author Karin Slaughter. Find out more about her bestselling novels, and how one in particular inspired this limited series.
RELATED: Everything to Know About Peacock's New Series The Good Daughter
Is The Good Daughter based on a book?
Yes, The Good Daughter is based on the novel of a same name by American crime writer, Karin Slaughter. Released in 2017, it rocketed to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, following in the footsteps of prior Slaughter novels Cop Town (2014) and Pretty Girls (2015).
A native of Georgia, Slaughter sets many of her novels in the state based on her keen knowledge and observation of its people and culture. “My life changed when I read Flannery O’Connor,” the author told the Los Angeles Times in 2025. “O’Connor was very weird; she lived in a small Southern town like me. She never fit in. And she was famous for writing these short stories. She created a whole freaking genre!”
She pursued writing, and read constantly throughout her childhood, into her teens and adulthood. When she lived through the fraught time of the Atlanta child murders from 1979-81, those events opened Slaughter’s eyes to the impact of crime on local communities and families. Ultimately, that’s become a recurring theme in Slaughter’s own fictional thrillers, often written from the perspective of those living through the repercussions of unrepentant crime and still seeking justice.
Did Karin Slaughter write the Peacock TV series The Good Daughter?
Yes, Slaughter wrote the entire limited series.This adaptation of The Good Daughter represents an impressive milestone in the novelist's writing career because she adapted her prose into the six scripts of this Peacock limited series. While she consulted on the series adaptations of Pieces of Her and Will Trent, Slaughter had never before written for television, and certainly never executive produced a series. Yet she did both for The Good Daughter.
“I love writing dialogue, and I think I write believable dialogue. But you can't be expository,” Slaughter told Peacock Blog. “So it was an interesting puzzle to figure out how to convey relationships, the past, and understanding through dialogue. I loved figuring out how to make it feel natural and smooth. These scripts are very close to me, because they're very close to the book.”
Jump into Slaughter’s story by watching The Good Daughter on November 12, exclusively on Peacock.
