Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Sister of Mine by Laurie Petrou. My thanks to Hollie at Verve Books for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my digital review copy. Hop over to Instragram and check out the post by my tour buddy for today, Johanna at memydogandbooks.
About the Book
Two sisters. One fire. A secret that won’t burn out.
The Grayson sisters are trouble. Everyone in their small town knows it. But no-one can know of the secret that binds them together.
Hattie is the light. Penny is the darkness. Together, they have balance.
But one night the balance is toppled. A match is struck. A fire is started. A cruel husband is killed. The potential for a new life flickers in the fire’s embers, but resentment, guilt, and jealousy suffocate like smoke.
Their lives have been engulfed in flames – will they ever be able to put them out?
Format: eARC (256 pages) Publisher: Verve Books
Publication date: 29th May 2023 Genre: Mystery
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My Review
Sister of Mine has a simmering air of menace and a feeling of impending disaster that slowly builds in a really satisfying and suspenseful way. Throughout the book you get a sense there’s a reckoning coming. And it does.
The story is narrated entirely from Penny’s point of view so the reader never knows how accurate is her representation of her sister Hattie’s character. At one point Hattie says to Penny, ‘Do you think you know what it’s like? You think you know how it feels to be me?’ In fact, Penny’s attitude to her sister is fluid and often contradictory. ‘I love her, I loved her, I hate her, I hated her.’ They have a sisterly bond but one infused with shared secrets, recriminations, feelings of guilt and jealousy. Being ‘adult orphans’, Penny as the elder sister regards Hattie as her responsibility but also as her ‘burden’. Penny presents Hattie as wayward, mercurial, rebellious but also someone who is attractive to others in a way Penny feels she is not. Indeed, Penny feels ‘tainted’ by the family’s past history and her response is often to seek a means of escape.
The blurb says ‘Hattie is the light. Penny is the darkness’ but it’s way more complex than that. They’ve both done things for which they blame themselves – and each other. As Penny observes, ‘We were bound now, twisted together in a braid of badness, neither side so different from the other anymore.’ But they have also each done things for the other, some of which are life-changing. The true nature of the bond between them is only revealed at the end of the book at which point much that went before becomes easier to comprehend and you may find your view of each sister – perhaps both sisters – changes.
Sister of Mine is a slow burn of a book (if you’ll pardon the pun) which has an element of mystery and some skilful misdirections. At its core, though, is a deft, perceptive and completely compelling exploration of sibling relationships.
In three words: Intense, brooding, insightful
Try something similar: Birthright by Charles Lambert
About the Author
Laurie Petrou is an award-winning, internationally published author. She is also an Associate Professor at the RTA School of Media at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson). She has a PhD and Master’s in Communication and Culture (York and Toronto Met), a diploma in New Media Design (Sheridan), and a Bachelor of Fine Arts, specializing in painting (Queen’s). She lives in Niagara. (Photo: Author website)
Connect with Laurie
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram
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