My Sister's Bones: A Novel of Suspense

by Nuala Ellwood

In the vein of Fiona Barton's The Widow and Renée Knight's Disclaimer, a psychological thriller about a war reporter who returns to her childhood home after her mother's death but becomes convinced that all is not well in the house next door--but is what she's seeing real or a symptom of the trauma she suffered in Syria?The One Person You Should Trust Is Lying to You.Kate has spent fifteen years bringing global injustice home: as a decorated war reporter, she's always in a place of conflict, writing about ordinary people in unimaginable situations. When her mother dies, Kate returns home from Syria for the funeral. But an incident with a young Syrian boy haunts her dreams, and when Kate sees a boy in the garden of the house next door--a house inhabited by an Iraqi refugee who claims her husband is away and she has no children--Kate becomes convinced that something is very wrong. As she struggles to separate her memories of Syria from the quiet town in which she grew up--and also to reconcile her memories of a traumatic childhood with her sister's insistence that all was not as Kate remembers--she begins to wonder what is actually true...and what is just in her mind.In this gripping, timely debut, Nuala Ellwood brings us an unforgettable damaged character, a haunting , humanizing look at the Syrian conflict, and a deeply harrowing psychological thriller that readers won't be able to put down.

• ISBN10: 0062661965
• ISBN13: 9780062661968
• Publish Date: 11 July 2017 (first published 1 November 2016)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: Collins
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

[Leah]

My Sister’s Bones is one of the twistiest books I’ve read this year! The plot above really doesn’t give much away, and neither does the book. It very much keeps its cards close to its chest. And the surprise reveal with only a little way to go was genuinely shocking, because in all the events leading up to it, you’re kind of convinced Kate is cuckoo. It all adds up – she’s suffered severe stress/trauma during her time as a journalist, and you kinda feel it’s all boiled up to the point where she’s seeing things that aren’t really there.

It was honestly impossible to see where the book would go next and there’s a few pretty surprising twists and turns that you won’t see coming. The book is told in three parts, and I was never sure what was coming next. Would Kate truly unravel to the point of no return? Was she ACTUALLY seeing a little boy? Would her sister Sally ever be anything but a drunk mess? It was so hard to trust Kate’s narrative, though, because you know she’s suffered lots and lots of trauma, and with everyone around her questioning her – even the police! – you kinda get to thinking that she must be untrustworthy, it must all be in her head. But you keep reading anyway because the narrative was so gripping.

My Sister’s Bones is definitely one of the most surprising, shocking books I’ve read. I didn’t see the ending coming, I didn’t expect it to pan out that way at all, and you know when you think you know a character and then it’s like you didn’t know them at all? That’s the scariest part. Nuala wrote her characters SO WELL, so convincingly! And you just kind of have to back up and wonder if there were signs, if you missed something? It was the greatest fake-out in the history of fake-outs. Nuala Ellwood is a cracking writer, she had me for a good’un.