Sister

by Rosamund Lupton

[Leah]

I have a confession to make: I don’t read books based on what Richard or Judy tell me I should read. Phew, I’m so glad I got that out of the way! Sister by Rosamund Lupton is indeed a Ricard and Judy pick (so Amazon tells me; like I said, I don’t care what R&J read, the same way I don’t care what Oprah reads). Because it’s a suspense/thriller, it appealed to me immediately, though; sometimes I like to spice up my reading and novels that are a bit tense, that are tightly written and hard to decipher are excellent choices for me and they’re the perfect antidote to Chick Lit which is decidedly lighter sometimes.

I thought Sister was an incredibly gripping novel. The narrative did take a little while to get used to, as it’s written in the form of one big letter so it takes a little while to get used to all the “you”s Beatrice uses because she’s talking to her sister as she recounts everything that occurred after her sister, Tess, disappeared. I loved the plot line and Lupton wrote it in such a way that I had no idea what was going to happen next, no idea what we’d find out about Tess next. Throughout the entire novel, I couldn’t wait to get to the end, to find out what exactly had happened to Tess.

Sister was a brilliant novel. Gripping, brilliant to read and hard to put down, I finished it in about 5 hours. I thought the big twist at the end was something else entirely. I truly and honestly didn’t seem it coming in the slightest. It wasn’t necessarily out of the blue either, I just didn’t see it coming! There’s no doubt that all the praise heaped upon Sister was more than worth it. Rosamund Lupton is a brilliant new talent in suspense/crime fiction and I’m rather pleased with myself that I already have her second novel Afterwards waiting to be read. Sister is a novel all crime/suspense fans should read and I loved it. The ending of the novel was open to interpretation as to how we felt the novel fully ended and I for one know how I chose it to end! I’m not usually a fan of endings that aren’t all wrapped up in a bow, but I liked that Lupton left it open for us and I liked choosing my own path for Beatrice and Tess. A brilliant, brilliant debut novel.