Good Evening All,

I haven’t posted in a while, but it doesn’t mean that I haven’t been reading. Given everything that is happening in the world at the moment, I have taken some time to educate myself and have reading books about black history across the world. These books don’t require a review in my opinion, so I have had my head down, learning and informing myself. 

Book 📖

Thank you to @realsandiejones and @panmacmillan for this advanced copy in return for an honest review. The Half Sister is due to be released TODAY (25th June) and you can purchase a copy here.

Description 🔖

Rose and her daughter Lauren and Kate are seemingly part of the perfect family. The death of Rose’s husband and the girls’ father deeply shook them all, but they maintained their closeness and kept their routine of family Sunday lunch. Then Jess turns up one Sunday claiming to be the half sister of Kate and Lauren. 

All three women are horrified by this claim but as Jess’ story starts to unfold, family secrets start to spill and it is clear that the family aren’t as perfect as they seem. 

General Thoughts 🤔

I was excited to have the opportunity to read this book. I read and reviewed The Other Woman by Sandie Jones and enjoyed it so reading some of her recent work appealed to me. 

Straight away, it is obvious there are going to be some interesting revelations in this book. The obvious question to begin with being is Jess really a long lost relative? Once the answer to this question is revealed, there are just more questions thrown into the mix. I liked this about the book in that I always felt like there was something about to be revealed. That said; I have to say I was slightly disappointed by the ending. Although I had my suspicions that this was indeed how it was going to end, it felt a little rushed to me. 

Characters 👫👭👬

I found the characters and their relationships interesting in this book and it did make me think about my own relationship with my sister. Kate and Lauren have very different relationships with their Mother as do my own sister and I. They also had very different memories of their Father. It intrigued me that they had such different memories of their Father’s character and would never really know the truth with him not being there to tell his own story. 

As sisters, Kate and Lauren had a relationship that I imagine is quite common. Each of them took quite different paths in life yet ultimately, envied what the other had. It seemed to me to be the ultimate “you always want what you haven’t got” scenario.

I never quite worked out how I felt about Jess. I went through sections of the book feeling sympathetic towards her and I went through other sections frustrated at her actions. I still can’t summarise how I really feel about her character.  

Writing Style ✍🏽

Each chapter is told from either the perspective of Kate or Lauren. As a reader I become quite invested in their stories and didn’t really notice that I wasn’t getting the perspective of any of the other characters. In hindsight I think reading the perspective of Rose and Jess would have been quite intriguing.

I was drawn into this book because of all the unknowns and the secrets but as I mentioned above, I feel like it ended a little too abruptly. I would have liked to have known more detail about the conclusion. 

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖

Overall this was a good mystery thriller and served it’s purpose for the time at which I read it. It wasn’t too complex and I didn’t find it hard to follow. This is the exact kind of book I needed to break from the intense books I have been reading of late. If you need a little bit of an escape I would definitely recommend this. I can imagine this story translating into a drama for TV quite well!

😍😍😍😫😫