Rosamund Lupton - Sister

review by Ro Bennett on show 6th October 2011
This was another gripping page turner for me and I sat up late to finish it - but having said that - it wasn’t a feel good book. I felt quite miserable and depressed whilst reading it. It had a good plot with a twist but I found it a tad morose even though I kept on reading, hoping for some sort of happy resolution to the situation. I actually had anxiety dreams the night I finished it - I dreamt my cat’s tail got ripped off and that I was trying to de-clutter my lounge (which was an even more horrific nightmare!), so make of that what you will...It will teach me to read late at night!

The book is written in letter form, from Beatrice to her younger sister Tess.
Beatrice who lives in New York with her fiancé Todd, is in the middle of Sunday lunch when she gets a frantic phone call from her mother to say that Tess, is missing. Beatrice and Todd had just got back from a snowy romantic break in a cabin in Maine where there hadn’t been a mobile phone signal. On hearing the news that her sister has already been missing for four days, Beatrice boards the first flight to London. Despite the fact that the police, Todd and even their mother accept they have lost Tess, Beatrice refuses to give up on her. She embarks on a chilling and suspenseful search during which she realises how little she actualy knew about her sister’s life. despite their supposedly close ties.

Through her investigations, she uncovers an affair with a married man which resulted in a pregnancy, meets another young man who has been besotted with her sister and stalking her and discovers that Tess was also participating in an experimental medical trial that might have gone very wrong. She suspects all of these as probable perpetrators with motives for foul play. However her family and the police simply see a grieving sister in denial, unwilling to accept the facts.

This is a psychological thriller with a twist. Each strand of the investigation uncovers a potentially ominous threat and the reader doesn’t know from which source the implied danger would strike, or if indeed there is any actual danger or just the product of a mind unbalanced by grief.

To me there were some discrepancies. The sisters are portrayed as completely different in outlook and personality - Tess, a free spirited artist and Beatrice rather conservative, high achieving and sanctimonious. So I’m not convinced that they would actually be as close as the book describes them to be.. I can’t see Tess tolerating Beatrice’s lectures and reprimands or confiding in a sister who was so smug and disapproving of her life style and choices. And I can’t see Beatrice forming a warm, indulgent bond with someone who was behaving in a way she would have perceived as totally irresponsible and unacceptable. It would be more believable if there was a frosty distance between them.

There were also some loose ends which weren’t addressed. There was a plot line where Beatrice thought she was being followed, however the Police kept assuring her that whoever he was, was on trial and would remain in jail. But we never found out who he was or his part in the mystery.

Also, Beatrice kept fainting and was unable to speak on occasions and her health appeared to be deteriorating. I presumed that whatever illness she had was going to be crucial to the plot line and the disappearance of Tess, but nothing seemed to be concluded with that either.

So all in all I’m rather ambivalent about the book.