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A review by melannrosenthal
The Sister by Louise Jensen
3.0
This was ok. Perhaps I'm getting a little jaded from mystery thrillers, perhaps the subtitle of this book shouldn't set the bar so high by declaring "A psychological thriller with a brilliant twist you won't see coming"....
We find Grace coping with the recent death of her best childhood friend, Charlie, distancing herself from her live-in boyfriend, Dan, as she prefers to go to and from work and drink alone at home before abusing sleeping pills prescribed by her doctor after the funeral. Lexie, Charlie's mother, blames Grace for her daughter's sudden death but is probably projecting her own shortcomings and is likely hiding a secret she's tried for years to cover up with her alcoholism.
I rather did enjoy the back and forth of the timeline, revealing eccentric and slightly horrifying bits of the past to break up Grace's monotonous, paranoid present. The reliance on sleeping pills seemed obvious and yet in the end, was pretty much irrelevantexcept when she basically ends up drugging herself so that Anna can hold her hostage within her own fire-damaged home (thanks to Anna for that as well) so really, most of what is revealed is revealed again as a red herring, one after the other... to the point where I'm not sure WHICH was the "brilliant twist".
I did like Grace despite the back and forth of whether or not she is an unreliable narrator, or just a nervous one, but as a whole the ending was a little too neat for me to love. There are several surprises in store here but sort of over-the-top to the point that by the epilogue I nearly forgot about Charlie. Otherwise: solid.
We find Grace coping with the recent death of her best childhood friend, Charlie, distancing herself from her live-in boyfriend, Dan, as she prefers to go to and from work and drink alone at home before abusing sleeping pills prescribed by her doctor after the funeral. Lexie, Charlie's mother, blames Grace for her daughter's sudden death but is probably projecting her own shortcomings and is likely hiding a secret she's tried for years to cover up with her alcoholism.
I rather did enjoy the back and forth of the timeline, revealing eccentric and slightly horrifying bits of the past to break up Grace's monotonous, paranoid present. The reliance on sleeping pills seemed obvious and yet in the end, was pretty much irrelevant
I did like Grace despite the back and forth of whether or not she is an unreliable narrator, or just a nervous one, but as a whole the ending was a little too neat for me to love. There are several surprises in store here but sort of over-the-top to the point that by the epilogue I nearly forgot about Charlie. Otherwise: solid.