Sister Sister

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for this advance copy.

We meet Claire. She lives with her husband, her two daughters and her mum. Many years ago when Claire was a child, her dad took her sister, Alice, on holiday and they never came back. Claire is now a successful solicitor and over the years they have been using private investigators to look for Alice, but with no joy. One day though, Claire’s mum receives a letter from Alice. Her father has died and she has found their contact details. She wants to come from America to meet them all.

Alice comes home but Claire finds it difficult to connect with her. It’s not like she imagined. She begins to feel that Alice is pushing her out of her home and her family. No one else feels like this, everyone is pleased that Alice is home. But there is something troubling Claire, but she doesn’t know what!

This was a great book. I finished this in just over a day as I couldn’t put it down. It starts off quite a normal story, but then as it goes on when Alice returns home it begins to turn into a really dark story. You can see what’s going on and you’re just willing everyone else to see what Claire is seeing but no one does, everyone loves Alice! There were times when I felt so sorry for Claire, obviously having to put up with everything, but then there were times when you begin to wonder if Claire is wrong, and perhaps she’s the one who is lying!

I genuinely didn’t know which way the story was going to turn. Was Claire right, or was she on the verge of a breakdown? What really happened all those years ago when Claire’s dad took Alice away, and why? Who else is involved in this? The story keeps you guessing right to the very end, twisting and turning its way through the story. There are lots of secrets and lots of revelations! A very clever story! I would definitely recommend this if you love psychological thrillers. Fantastic book by a fantastic author!!

I'm sitting here gobsmacked at what occurred in Sister Sister. It starts as a rather nice story, about a family who have always been splintered, and developed into a far more sinister storyline, complete with betrayal and secrets.

Claire and Alice had been separated as young children, when their father took Alice on a long holiday to America and never came back, splitting the family. As Claire grew up and became a solicitor she was able to afford to high private detectives, but they never found Alice. Suddenly this year though, Alice makes contact with her mum, and shortly afterwards she is back in the family house, and everyone is making up for lost time trying to reconnect.

However Claire can't really feel much for Alice, and despite being happy her sister is home, also suspects something is fishy, but the way everything is presented, the rest of her family think she is going mad.

The question I had to ask was whether I was reading a story with an unreliable narrator, or was everything that I was seeing true fact, and that Alice was the one making things up. There were points during the story where both of these possibilities seemed equally true, all the while I was gripped by what has occurring and had to keep reading to find out, just how the events in the first chapter really came about.

At points during the book I genuinely did feel that Claire may be on the brink of a breakdown, but at the same time everything she was saying seemed quite believable. Other times, I was curious to know more about the sister that had returned. I also quite liked Claire's husband Luke and his reactions to the circumstance seemed initially logical but then he seemed quite keen to believe his wife was not quite coping, while seemingly getting closer to the other sister.

The whole story developed until it was caught up in a thrilling finale, where I really couldn't have predicted the final outcome. maybe I am just too trusting of facts at face value! There is a lot of action in this book, and I think the story definitely got under my skin a bit. It definitely had me thinking how I would feel if a sister returned after such a long absence.

There are many revelations in the book, and most of them seemed quite unexpected when I first read them, but thinking back afterwards they are the sorts that make a lot of sense, what you think them through, and I was wondering why I hadn't thought like that myself.

Sister Sister, is a another top quality story from Sue Fortin, an author who is becoming reliable for producing books with lots of drama, suspense, relatable to characters and a romantic element to them too.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Harper Impulse for this copy of the book which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

Claire and Alice are sisters, living happily with their parents in their family home. Alice was four-years old when that all changed. She idolised her older sister, but one day her father took her away on holiday and as she sat in the car waving goodbye to her sister she did not realise that she may never see her again. Her father had actually left his wife and firstborn daughter to start a new life in America. He would marry again and this time Alice would have a brother as well as a caring step-mother. This new family her father considered his true forever family.
Claire and her mother lived on together in the family home through the trauma of separation. Claire grew up to become a solicitor but she never forgot her beautiful blue-eyed little sister; indeed she tried her level best to track down her departed family. She even hired a private investigator, but her father did not want to be traced and changed his identity and that of little Alice as well. Claire always wondered why he had chosen Alice instead of her, or even why he hadn’t taken them both with him, and she and her mother were always very sad when anniversaries came and went by.
Twenty years later Claire’s mother, who lived with Claire’s family - a husband and two daughters - in their original family home, received a letter from Alice. She was euphoric as she handed it over for Claire to read. Alice’s father had passed away and her step-mother had given Alice her birth mother’s address. Alice, Claire and her mother wrote an emotional letter back and soon it was arranged for Alice to fly over from Florida for a reunion and a holiday with her family. And what a reunion it promised to be. Just the very anticipation of meeting Alice again set their pulses alight.
Arriving in the UK Alice was welcomed warmly into her family, but soon Claire began to tire of Alice flirting with her husband and lavishing love on her mother and her own children. Claire was jealous, but more than jealous she was secretly suspicious of her sister. Strange things had started to happen and soon Claire was under suspicion of having committed a crime. Everyone, including her husband thought she was behaving badly and needed help: in short that she had mental health problems. That didn’t go down well at all. She left home, bent on proving she was still in her right mind Or was she? Had the trauma of re-visiting her past finally been the straw that broke the camel’s back?
‘Sister, Sister’ by Sue Fortin is a truly absorbing psychological thriller. It is full of action, tension and shocking twists and turns, right up to the very last chapter. The storytelling is wonderfully involving and the characters within the story are skilfully developed, but with secrets and issues of their own which greatly impact on the story. It’s a thrilling, detailed cleverly plotted and carefully executed story, giving hugely exciting and unexpected cliff-hangers. I really loved it. I would like to thank NetGalley and publisher Harper Impulse for my copy of this novel, sent to me in return for an honest review. I have no hesitation in recommending this as a very good read within this genre. It’s a 9/10 from me.

This is a great book and the first I've read by this author, and probably won't be the last! Full of twists and turns, it's a real page turner!

Such a good book, couldn't put it down and just wanted to devour it and read it all! - really good plot, likeable characters, could really picture everything...totally in suspense! All the ingredients for a fab book!