Sister

I came to this book very late in relation to it's immense publicity and popularity a few years ago when it featured on the Richard & Judy reading list. It's been lingering in my e-reader for some time and I've always seemed to flick past it but I knew it would pull me in eventually and I am very glad indeed that it did.

Beatrice is living in America with her fiancé when she receives a call from her mother to notify her that her sister Tess has gone missing. Despite Tess being somewhat of a ‘free spirit' Beatrice immediately hops on a plane and comes home to search for her. The book is written retrospectively in a letter to her sister as Beatrice relates the tale to a representative of the Criminal Prosecution Service as a statement.

The story unfolds really nicely through reflective passages that flick back into the shared past of the sisters and we learn a great deal about their relationship and how they differ with Tess being an art student who lives near to their mother but is regarded as a little eccentric whereas Beatrice is the high flyer with secure job and a good future who flew the nest for life abroad. The differences between them has had no bearing on their closeness and it is this relationship which makes Beatrice sure that something terrible has happened to her sister and forces her onward till she finds the answers to where she has gone.

It is book with many different potential options of what happened to Tess, we are presented a large list of possible suspects and motives throughout and it is hard to decipher who actually is to blame, I found myself swaying on several occasions and questioning everything. I didn't guess the ending before the closing chapters and that in itself was hugely refreshing as often with this genre you are almost groaning at the end with a sense of “I could have told you that 7 chapters ago”, it is lovely that this book didn't give me that. It dropped a huge bombshell at the end which turned the whole book on it's head.

I've read some people found the ending frustrating, and I can understand why that was the case. I didn't find myself disliking it so strongly it impacted my enjoyment of the rest, I just felt it didn't reach a proper conclusion which because of how it had been written I was expecting to be able to gain, instead it was very much a quick and dramatic end with no conclusion.

I really enjoyed the central theme of the book, the relationship between the sisters and the way in which we pull for Beatrice to find the solution to Tess' disappearance, we believe her innately and know that she is doing the right thing. The surrounding characters are really well written and as a result we suspect everyone and believe nothing. This is the art to good mystery writing.

I thoroughly enjoyed this, my first Rosamund Lupton book and I am looking forward to reading more in the months and years ahead.

The story is interesting, it grips you and keeps you on the edge, at least for the first half. Unfortunately, towards the end, it utilizes a lot of cliches, a lot of repetitions. For me, the ending was predictable and that's why it was so disappointing. For a story that was starting so grippingly and suspenseful, the characters felt real, the relationships were tangible, the ending was a let down. The way the story unfolded towards the end felt forced, cringed and trying to be “like in the movies”, some aspects came out of nowhere just to check some bullet points. Overall, if you enjoy murder thrillers, it's an enjoyable read, if not, you can give it a skip, you've probably heard the story before.