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msiegel8's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
yvo_about_books's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
3.25
Finished reading: April 29th 2024
"People go traveling for two reasons: because they are searching for something, or they are running from something."
I have a yearly goal of reading at least one book in Dutch, and this year I ended up deciding to read the Dutch translation of one of Lucy Clarke's books. I always love a travel element in my thrillers and I've enjoyed her writing in the past, so I was hoping that this would make the task of reading in a language I hardly use anymore a little easier... But sadly I did end up having mixed thoughts. I struggled considerably with the word choice and tone in the translation, as both fell off for me. I'm not sure up to what point it was the fault of the translation, as it might just have been me and my rusty Dutch, but it really impacted my reading experience in a negative way. This wasn't my only issue though. I also struggled to connect to both sisters, and especially Mia. I never warmed up to her, and her behavior was so selfish and negative during the story. The fact that we have more than one love triangle and cheating to deal with doesn't help either of course. I can't deny that I did love the travel element though, with chapters set in locations including Maui, Australia and Bali. It was interesting to see how these locations impacted both characters, and I liked the dual timeline structure where we switch between Katie in the present and Mia in the past. Both are connected through the diary, and while the twists were mostly quite predictable I still enjoyed the journey. All in all it's not my favorite Lucy Clarke story, although this might have had to do with the Dutch translation as well.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Addiction, Infidelity, Mental illness, Toxic friendship, Cancer, Gaslighting, Death of parent, Grief, Sexual content, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Alcohol, Cursing, Death, Alcoholism, Injury/Injury detail, and Drug use
regalvee's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
This has been on my kindle tbr for many many years so I thought it was about time I gave it a chance and I am glad I did.
The book is a story of two sisters and their relationship. The younger sister Mia decides to go travelling and whilst she is away keeps a journal, unfortunately she dies in Bali and so her older sister Katie decides to follow in her foot steps by following what happened on the journal.
The story alternates between Mia (past) and Katie (present) which I really liked as it added a lot more depth to the story and you really felt like you got to know both sisters.
There are a few twists, turns and revaluations scattered throughout which keeps you turning the pages and there is a small cast of characters all well written.
There are some dark topics covered in this book so I would suggest checking trigger warnings before diving in but I'm really glad I gave this book a chance.
The book is a story of two sisters and their relationship. The younger sister Mia decides to go travelling and whilst she is away keeps a journal, unfortunately she dies in Bali and so her older sister Katie decides to follow in her foot steps by following what happened on the journal.
The story alternates between Mia (past) and Katie (present) which I really liked as it added a lot more depth to the story and you really felt like you got to know both sisters.
There are a few twists, turns and revaluations scattered throughout which keeps you turning the pages and there is a small cast of characters all well written.
There are some dark topics covered in this book so I would suggest checking trigger warnings before diving in but I'm really glad I gave this book a chance.
jmj697mn's review against another edition
3.0
I couldn't put it down because I was dying to know what happened to Mia. When I finished though, the ending seemed a bit ludicrous and although it was a quick read, there were a lot of things that didn't seem very realistic. I still recommend it because of how fast it flew by but don't expect the world.
patchworkbunny's review against another edition
3.0
When Katie Greene is woken in the night, she is convinced her sister Mia has just got the time difference wrong. Six months earlier, Mia had announced she was off travelling, taking her best friend Finn with her. But it is not Mia on the phone; it is the police at her doorstep. Mia is dead. Suspected suicide. Katie refuses to believe that her vivacious, impulsive and undoubtedly alive sister would take her own life. In her belongings is a travel journal. Katie makes the decision to follow her Mia’s footsteps, saving each entry to read in the location it was written. This is her last lifeline to her and her last chance to find out what really happened in Bali. A place Mia was never meant to be.
I get the feeling Lucy Clarke wanted to write about her travels and her love of the sea and built up the story around that. The first half of the story has the feeling of travel writing but without the informal quality of a first person narrator retelling their experiences. Saying that, there are some wonderful descriptions of the sea. Mia’s travels kept to the shoreline, echoing her childhood in Cornwall and bridging the past to the present. Both sisters fondly remember growing up together on the beaches of home, only growing up removed them both from their love and into the big city. Mia’s travels seem to be trying to recapture the times when she was happy and carefree.
I took an instant dislike to Katie’s fiancé, Ed. Perhaps this is what made me struggle to get into the book until half-way, when something is revealed that backs up his standoffishness. He wants Katie to be her bland, safe self. The Katie that doesn’t inspire empathy as you read. But Katie does start to transform as she follows in her sister’s footsteps.
It’s Mia’s story that really grabbed me, around the point she meets Noah, a surfer who instantly captures her attention. I did feel sorry for Finn, a loyal and lifelong friend to both women. This marks Mia’s spiralling emotions, ups and downs, and finally I cared about what really happened to her. By the end, my eyes were tearing up and I was genuinely moved by her final moments.
Whilst the main theme of the book deals with the turbulent relationships of two sisters who both love and hate each other at points in their lives, I liked the way she wrote about guilt. Katie is fortunate to have a journal to tell her what happened but after a suicide, those closest to the victim will constantly be picking at their actions. Is there something they did that tipped them over the edge? It’s so easy for every individual to blame themselves and sometimes sharing those fears is the best way to realise you can’t lay the blame on one single thing.
I get the feeling Lucy Clarke wanted to write about her travels and her love of the sea and built up the story around that. The first half of the story has the feeling of travel writing but without the informal quality of a first person narrator retelling their experiences. Saying that, there are some wonderful descriptions of the sea. Mia’s travels kept to the shoreline, echoing her childhood in Cornwall and bridging the past to the present. Both sisters fondly remember growing up together on the beaches of home, only growing up removed them both from their love and into the big city. Mia’s travels seem to be trying to recapture the times when she was happy and carefree.
I took an instant dislike to Katie’s fiancé, Ed. Perhaps this is what made me struggle to get into the book until half-way, when something is revealed that backs up his standoffishness. He wants Katie to be her bland, safe self. The Katie that doesn’t inspire empathy as you read. But Katie does start to transform as she follows in her sister’s footsteps.
It’s Mia’s story that really grabbed me, around the point she meets Noah, a surfer who instantly captures her attention. I did feel sorry for Finn, a loyal and lifelong friend to both women. This marks Mia’s spiralling emotions, ups and downs, and finally I cared about what really happened to her. By the end, my eyes were tearing up and I was genuinely moved by her final moments.
Whilst the main theme of the book deals with the turbulent relationships of two sisters who both love and hate each other at points in their lives, I liked the way she wrote about guilt. Katie is fortunate to have a journal to tell her what happened but after a suicide, those closest to the victim will constantly be picking at their actions. Is there something they did that tipped them over the edge? It’s so easy for every individual to blame themselves and sometimes sharing those fears is the best way to realise you can’t lay the blame on one single thing.
beastreader's review against another edition
5.0
Katie is awaken by knocking on her door. It is the police. They inform Katie that her sisiter, Mia has committed suicide. She jumped off a cliff. At first Katie does not beleive that Mia would take her own life but then Katie tries to make sense of it all. Katie decides to travel in Mia's footsteps. Armed with Mia's jouranal, Katie takes a life-changing journey that will bring her closer to Mia then ever before.
Swimming at Night is a breath of fresh air. This book is like swimming at night beneath the stars. While I tended to lean more towards Mia, I still loved Katie as well. The reason that I loved Mia more was because she was a wild child. She threw caution to the wind and just acted on impluse. Just for the record I am more like Katie, however I want to be a little more like Mia. This is why I did love Mia. I could live vicariously through Mia. Just like Katie did by reading and expericing everything and place that Mia went on her travels. It was great getting to see Katie open up and let loose. I felt like I really got to know the two sisters.
There were a couple of guys in the story for lost interests. The one main love interest for Mia, I was not fully accepting until the last part of the story. It was then that I really understood and felt the love that the guy had for Mia. The guy that Katie ended up with in the end, I was a little diappointed in. Not because I did not like the guy and he was a way better choice for her then the one she was with. It was that I felt that the guy that Katie ended up with was a little bit of a threw in. Like Katie had to have a guy to have a happy ending. Plus it did not help with they were not together for most of the book. The ending put a smile on my face like a ray of sunshine. I look forward to reading the next book by this author.
Swimming at Night is a breath of fresh air. This book is like swimming at night beneath the stars. While I tended to lean more towards Mia, I still loved Katie as well. The reason that I loved Mia more was because she was a wild child. She threw caution to the wind and just acted on impluse. Just for the record I am more like Katie, however I want to be a little more like Mia. This is why I did love Mia. I could live vicariously through Mia. Just like Katie did by reading and expericing everything and place that Mia went on her travels. It was great getting to see Katie open up and let loose. I felt like I really got to know the two sisters.
There were a couple of guys in the story for lost interests. The one main love interest for Mia, I was not fully accepting until the last part of the story. It was then that I really understood and felt the love that the guy had for Mia. The guy that Katie ended up with in the end, I was a little diappointed in. Not because I did not like the guy and he was a way better choice for her then the one she was with. It was that I felt that the guy that Katie ended up with was a little bit of a threw in. Like Katie had to have a guy to have a happy ending. Plus it did not help with they were not together for most of the book. The ending put a smile on my face like a ray of sunshine. I look forward to reading the next book by this author.
shit_she_reads's review against another edition
4.0
“The Sea Sisters” was a recommendation by a good friend and I’m glad I picked it up! Katie’s younger sister Mia dies unexpectedly during her last weeks of traveling the world. Katie doesn’t believe in what the official sources tell her and decides to follow her sister’s travel journal to find out what’s really happened to her.
It’s a thrilling mystery read and such a page-turner — I listened to the audiobook whenever I had the slightest bit of time because I was so captivated. That being said, I was a little disappointed by the ending. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I expected more of a grand finale.
Still, what made me love “The Sea Sisters” is the relationship of Mia and Katie. Being an older sister myself some parts were really gut-wrenching for me and I could feel so much for Katie — their relationship is described so realistically that it hurts.
This was my first Lucy Clarke novel and I think it won’t be my last!
It’s a thrilling mystery read and such a page-turner — I listened to the audiobook whenever I had the slightest bit of time because I was so captivated. That being said, I was a little disappointed by the ending. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I expected more of a grand finale.
Still, what made me love “The Sea Sisters” is the relationship of Mia and Katie. Being an older sister myself some parts were really gut-wrenching for me and I could feel so much for Katie — their relationship is described so realistically that it hurts.
This was my first Lucy Clarke novel and I think it won’t be my last!
annecarts's review against another edition
3.0
An enjoyable, fast paced read. The reason I didn't mark this higher is that some of the twists were predictable and I found some of the coincidences unlikely, such as people bumping into each other all over the world! A recommended holiday style read though.
jacki_f's review against another edition
3.0
Katie and Mia are sisters and they are complete opposites. Katie is organised and responsible, while Mia doesn't last 5 minutes in a job and is very highly strung. They have been raised by their mother after their father left when they were very young. After their mother dies of cancer, Mia spontaneously decides to take a trip around the world with her best friend, Finn. Several months later, after only very sporadic contact from Mia, Katie is woken by a knock on the door in the middle of the night. Mia's body has been found at the foot of a cliff in Bali and the authorities have concluded that she committed suicide. Katie's reaction is one of disbelief - Mia wouldn't have done that. In the end, armed with Mia's travel journal, she decides to trace Mia's footsteps around the world in an effort to understand what was going through Mia's head and whether Mia killed herself or not.
This is an easy book to read and it's an interesting premise but the story hinges on so many unlikely coincidences and choices and that really undermined it for me. I couldn't imagine anyone behaving like Katie did. Your sister has killed herself on the other side of the world, you can't imagine what was going through her head and you're armed with her travel diary - so wouldn't you read it? Or talk to the friend who was travelling with her? But no, instead of doing any of these things - and despite the fact that she's getting married in four months' time - Katie books a three month trip for herself, deciding to go to all the places that Mia visited and only read the travel diary day by day, when she's in the same place where Mia was as she wrote each entry. So for example she spends a month travelling up and down the West Coast of Australia before even heading to Bali. It just doesn't feel even remotely realistic!
I also felt that the characters were hard to believe. They tended to behave in ways that served the plot rather than ways that real people would behave. Katie and Finn in particular felt quite under-developed to me. There are also lots of back stories between the various characters which will emerge over the course of the book. So what that means is that people withhold information so that it doesn't get revealed too early - Ed in particular does something midway through the book that I think he would actually have done much earlier (I won't explain further but if you've read the book you'll know what I mean).
So in summary, this is a good holiday read, undemanding and reasonably intriguing, with plenty of twists and a mystery that holds out till the end. However I didn't feel that it was in any way a standout. I did however like the descriptions of the places that Mia and Katie travel too - they really came alive for me and made me feel like slinging a backpack on myself!
In the US, this book has been published under the title "Swimming at Night" and in the UK as "The Sea Sisters".
This is an easy book to read and it's an interesting premise but the story hinges on so many unlikely coincidences and choices and that really undermined it for me. I couldn't imagine anyone behaving like Katie did. Your sister has killed herself on the other side of the world, you can't imagine what was going through her head and you're armed with her travel diary - so wouldn't you read it? Or talk to the friend who was travelling with her? But no, instead of doing any of these things - and despite the fact that she's getting married in four months' time - Katie books a three month trip for herself, deciding to go to all the places that Mia visited and only read the travel diary day by day, when she's in the same place where Mia was as she wrote each entry. So for example she spends a month travelling up and down the West Coast of Australia before even heading to Bali. It just doesn't feel even remotely realistic!
I also felt that the characters were hard to believe. They tended to behave in ways that served the plot rather than ways that real people would behave. Katie and Finn in particular felt quite under-developed to me. There are also lots of back stories between the various characters which will emerge over the course of the book. So what that means is that people withhold information so that it doesn't get revealed too early - Ed in particular does something midway through the book that I think he would actually have done much earlier (I won't explain further but if you've read the book you'll know what I mean).
So in summary, this is a good holiday read, undemanding and reasonably intriguing, with plenty of twists and a mystery that holds out till the end. However I didn't feel that it was in any way a standout. I did however like the descriptions of the places that Mia and Katie travel too - they really came alive for me and made me feel like slinging a backpack on myself!
In the US, this book has been published under the title "Swimming at Night" and in the UK as "The Sea Sisters".