Silent Sister is a horrific true story set in Merseyside, it was quite a shocking read and was very well written.

For over 20 years, Joanne Lee's mother kept the remains of not one, but three newborn babies hidden in a bin in her wardrobe.

She had buried a fourth baby in newspaper and rags in St Helens Cemetery.

For the first time since exposing her mother's crimes, Joanne breaks her silence over her family's horrific ordeal and her fight for justice for the siblings she never knew.

Growing up in chaotic circumstances on Merseyside, Joanne suffered at the hands of a violent boyfriend and controlling relatives, as her mother lapsed into a downward spiral of drinking and casual sex following the break-up of her marriage. But the consequences of her mother's messy lifestyle turned out to be far worse than Joanne could ever have imagined.

She already knew about the baby buried in a shallow makeshift grave next to the family plot. But when Joanne came across a red plastic bin in her mother's wardrobe in 2009, she realized that the family home held an even more sinister secret.

In Silent Sisters, the daughter who was falsely accused of murdering her own baby sister will tell her full story for the first time, detailing her struggle to understand her mother, to piece together the truth and to give the four babies the proper burial they deserve.

I was of course not one to enjoy such the horrific story of Joanne Lee's life. At times it did drag too much. The retelling of stories. Sometimes the recounting of stories changed. I don't know what to make of this. It is a sad case.

Written by Joanne Lee, she tells about her life as a young girl growing up and feeling ignored by her really dysfunctional mom in Merseyside. She’s ignored, left to raise herself after her parent’s divorce when her mom dives into dating and starts having kids that she then puts on this young girl to take care of while mom just drinks and watches “telly”. Joanne eventually begins missing a lot of school because she’s too busy doing all of the cleaning, cooking, laundry, and childcare for her mother’s growing brood. When she gets a bit older, her mom begins inviting over young guys her daughter’s age at night to party with, telling her that she needs to have some fun too. But that was more for the mom’s benefit. It’s a bizarre yet fascinating story and it keeps on getting crazier. You wonder how much someone can put up with. It kind of has to be read to be believed at times as the daughters get older. I try not to read much of the info from the description or jacket before I read books, so some of them really come as a quite a surprise as I’m reading them, as this one did. I had a lot of empathy for Joanne and what she went through. Especially what happened later with the dead babies, which I’m not going into here. Get the book and read it if you’re interested in this unusual story. My thanks for the advance electronic copy that was provided by NetGalley, author Joanne Lee, and Mirror Books

This book was ok. At times you forgot that it was a true story.
This book was written very well and even though the facts were horrific it didn’t feel too dark

This book started off with a bang and just kept on going. While this is a true crime story it is very interesting
and written more like a memoir which is more to my liking. This book is all about the life of Joanne and how she broke open the shell and exposed the secrets of her mother's terrible crimes. Joanne's mother was not like other mothers. Right from the start of the book Joanne is left on her own to do most things feed herself, and do her own laundry at a very young age. Her mother was acting more like the child in their relationship and it made things very difficult growing up, she even had to take care of her younger siblings. I thought that this book was going to be mostly about the crime that took place however that wasn't even mentioned until the end part of the book. Most of the story was about how Joanne's mother was neglectful and left all the responsibility to her eldest daughter. Now these kinds of books I usually enjoy, and I did super enjoy this book I just had a very different mind set on what this book was going to be about when I started it based on the cover descriptions that I read. When by cleaning up a filthy house Joanne finds a box with the remains of not just one new born but four, she decides enough is enough and this leads her to take action. I found Joanne's character
very well written she was very responsible and strong to have gone through the terrible things that she went through, and even though her mother did a lot of bad things I still really felt for her because she must have been sick or something to let those terrible things happen. I also enjoyed the way that this book was written it wasn't to dark but it didn't sugar coat anything that happened. She wrote it more in a factual way and I really enjoyed this. While there were parts that I didn't like and parts that I didn't see coming based on the description I found the story to be rather interesting and I'm glad that I got the chance to check it out.