She Treads Softly: Two Sisters

Sunday, August 11, 2024

Two Sisters

Two Sisters by Lorna Henderson
8/8/24; 294 pages
Choc Lit/Joffe Books

Two Sisters by Lorna Henderson is a recommended family drama full of secrets and reads like a soap opera. This is a revised edition of the novel that was originally published as Where Are You? by L.E. Hill.

Tara and Josie had their mother leave them when they were children. Now Tara and her family are living in their old childhood home and fixing it up. Josie is staying nearby with their grandmother after she left her husband. Their father lives in the same town. When builders find bones buried in the garden it starts an investigation. It also marks the start of one twist/reveal after another.

The narrative is told through alternate points-of-view in the present and the past, basically Tara and Josie with an unknown voice occasionally. One drama after another follows and quickly multiplies.

The good news is that Two Sisters will hold your attention like any good, over-the-top soap opera does. These people have a constant barrage of one thing after another and plenty of hints along the way that they are all holding secrets. The bad news is that not all of the dramas/secrets are necessarily worth the suspense and some may induce eye-rolling.

Still, you will keep reading to see what on earth is going to happen or be revealed next. Thanks to Joffe Books for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.