The Sisters Chase

by Sarah Healy

The hardscrabble Chase women - Mary, Hannah, and their mother Diane - have been eking out a living running a tiny seaside motel that has been in the family for generations, inviting trouble into their lives for just as long. Eighteen-year-old Mary Chase is a force of nature: passionate, beautiful, and free-spirited. Her much younger sister, Hannah, whom Mary affectionately calls 'Bunny', is imaginative, her head full of the stories of princesses and adventures that Mary tells to give her a safe emotional place in the middle of their troubled world.

But when Diane dies in a car accident, Mary discovers the motel is worth less than the back taxes they owe. With few options, Mary's finely tuned instincts for survival kick in. As the sisters begin a cross-country journey in search of a better life, she will stop at nothing to protect Hannah. But Mary wants to protect herself, too, for the secrets she promised she would never tell - but now may be forced to reveal - hold the weight of unbearable loss. Vivid and suspenseful, The Sisters Chase is a whirlwind page-turner about the extreme lengths one family will go to find - and hold onto - love.

• ISBN10: 0349134545
• ISBN13: 9780349134543
• Publish Date: 27 June 2017
• Publish Status: Withdrawn
• Out of Print: 29 March 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
• Imprint: Blackfriars
• Format: Paperback (UK Trade)
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[gmcgregor]

The titular sisters of Sarah Healy's The Sisters Chase couldn't be more different. Fourteen years older, Mary has dark coloring and a corresponding dark personality...she's ruthlessly pragmatic, manipulative, proud and ungovernable. Hannah, however, is blonde and takes after the nursery rhyme in that she seems to be made of sugar and spice and everything nice. Their single mother owns and runs a hotel in a seaside town on the East Coast and has a night shift at a nearby casino to keep their family going during the off-season. But when she's killed in a car crash, Mary and Hannah find themselves on their own. Back taxes on the hotel and no life insurance mean that they're broke, and so Mary takes Hannah and leaves the only home they've ever known to try to take care of her.

After Mary successfully prises some seed money from wealthy relatives in Florida, she and Hannah (who Mary calls "Bunny") connect with an old acquaintance of hers in New England. Things seem stable, and even like they might end up happy, but Mary's past shows up to bite them and they leave. As Hannah grows up, they continue to travel, Mary refusing to put roots down anywhere for too long, until they wind up in California. Hannah, now on the cusp of her teenage years, wants desperately to stay in one place and so several months pass, but the idyll can't last and eventually tragedy strikes.

All of that is super vague because this book is very much "about" its plot and its mysteries. I gave this book a low rating, and part of that is that is just because the kind of book that it is: plot-over-character is not my cup of tea. But my ratings are also informed by my opinion of the quality of the book and how well it did what it was trying to do, and this is where The Sisters Chase really took a nosedive. I tend feel like if "the twists" are all you have, you don't have a story. The Sisters Chase indulges heavily in one of the ways I find most irritating of shielding "the twists"...it deliberately hides information known to the characters from the reader. It's not that this can't be done well, it's that this book doesn't do them well. I guessed the big twist long in advance and I'm awful at guessing the twist. And I had a huge issue with characterization, too. The book actually has very few characters it spends any significant amount of time with (primarily Mary and Hannah), so should be able to round them out more fully. Instead, both the girls are flat. Mary is the kind of "she's beautiful...but wild" stereotype I've always found deeply irritating, and Hannah is so milquetoast that she's barely there. I've always thought that the three most important elements of a novel are plot, character, and writing, and a book needs two of three better than average to be good, and all three to be truly great. This book was not successful, for me, in any of those areas.

[Quirky Cat]

The Sisters Chase is a fun play on words, as the story is about the Chase sisters living on the road and on the run after their mother’s sudden death. It’s a deeply emotional telling about the lengths Mary will go to in order to keep her little sister Hannah comfortable and safe (and most importantly, to Mary at least, with her). Their story is one that makes you question right versus wrong, the truth versus a lie. Everything is so blended together it’s hard to clearly define what is what.



The Chase sisters seem to get more than their fair share of bad luck, orphaned at a young age (Mary at eighteen and Hannah at four) they’re left destitute with very few options to choose from. They end up on the road for several years, hopping from campsite to hotel and back again. She tells Hannah wild stories to keep the travels interesting and fun (as opposed to scary and depressing).
It’s pretty clear right from the start that Mary will do just about anything for Hannah’s sake. This includes resorting to less than legal actions (such as blackmail). Her loyalty is fierce and unwavering, at, once earned that is. Mary doesn’t seem to like too many other people, and appears at her most content when it’s just her and Hannah. Their love of water and beaches is truly iconic, and something I think will be remembered anytime I think of the book.
I actually had to take a few days between finishing the novel and writing the review – it was difficult finding the right words to say. Clearly Healy wants the reader to form an opinion of Mary, and let that opinion set the tone of the novel. There are twists and turns that occur in the novel, where the reader’s opinion of Mary will color Mary’s actions (Were they right? Were they wrong?). I think many of the events that occur are ambiguous enough to reaffirm the reader’s opinion, regardless of what they actually feel about Mary. I can’t quite say I’ve ever read a book that handled that so subtly and carefully. Knowing that, I don’t want to say anything to influence anybody’s opinions. Reading the Sisters Chase was an experience, and while I didn’t end up loving it, I truly do not want to deprive anyone else of that.


For more reviews, check out Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks