Title: The Sisters

 Author: Claire Douglas

 Genre: Mystery, Thriller

 Published: August 13th 2015 by HarperCollins

 Series: Standalone

 My rating: ★★

Synopsis

One lied. One died.

When one sister dies, the other must go to desperate lengths to survive. Haunted by her twin sister’s death, Abi is making a fresh start in Bath. But when she meets twins Bea and Ben, she is quickly drawn into their privileged and unsettling circle.

When one sister lies, she must protect her secret at all costs. As Abi tries to keep up with the demands of her fickle friends, strange things start to happen – precious letters go missing and threatening messages are left in her room. Is this the work of the beautiful and capricious Bea? Or is Abi willing to go to any lengths to get attention? When the truth outs, will either sister survive?

My Review

“You have to stop looking for someone else to save you. Only you can do that for yourself.”

– Clair Douglas, The Sisters

I love that quote, not just because it’s beautifully written but also because it’s one of the only lines where maturity is reflected in a character’s behaviour.

The characters in this Book are supposed to be in their 30’s. But were it not for the fact that age has been expressly mentioned and their well-established jobs, I would have pegged this to be a teen drama. The three main characters are insanely immature and have toxic personalities which in turn make for toxic relationships. Moreover, some of their actions made no sense whatsoever and seemed like they existed only to drive the plot forward. For instance, Beatrice asked Abi to move into her house days after she met Abi, without knowing an ounce of information about Abi. If that is how she lived, I’m surprised she hadn’t been murdered already. On the other hand, Abi refused to move out even in the face of rapidly increasing toxicity. It’s not like she had nowhere to go; Her actions made little sense.

Secondly, not only are they immature and impractical, their behaviour is also highly inconsistent. It is not inconsistent in the sense that their actions don’t match their thoughts because they are trying to hide some hidden ulterior motives, but more that they contradict themselves in their own internal thoughts. I’ll go ahead and give you an example for this, without revealing the names of the characters and exact nature of the unfolding events so as to prevent the distribution of unwanted spoilers. There are two characters- X and Y. X did something for Y and Y hated it (the way expressed it was extremely immature in and of itself, but that’s not the point here). The point is, when Y expressed dissent, X thought to herself, “I thought this might happen” followed closely by “heart is pounding with glee”. But then a few chapters later, X’s thought did a convenient 180 about the same event. Now she thought to herself, “She thought she was doing a nice thing – A king thing for [Y]”. This was so blatantly contradictory; She knew Y would be upset, she was happy that Y was upset and then later apparently, she thought she was doing nice thing?

This sort of inconsistency in thought did not build intrigue, but only worked to suggest that perhaps the author herself was confused about how she wanted the characters to act. In her misguided attempt to deceive the reader into thinking what wasn’t there, the author only succeeded in creating dual minded and irksome characters.

Thirdly, I absolutely despised Abi’s character. Immaturity aside, Abi was also weak, naïve and unnecessarily competitive. While it was fair to justify some of her behaviour through her sister’s death, it was time and again used as an excuse that was to be blamed for ALL of Abi’s irrational behaviour. Abi refused to see things that were right in front of her in the name of “love”. She was dramatic and ungrateful, and I just did not like her. Her boyfriend had to go on a business trip for two weeks and she acted as if that was the end of the world – “I can’t bear the thought of being away from him for that long; he’s the anchor to my boat and I worry that I will float out to sea, directionless, without him.” It was just two weeks. Video call him.

Moving onto what I actually liked about the book; If you manage to keep the characters aside, the plot was actually pretty nice. Honestly, if the characters were different, I would have probably ended by giving this book five stars. The pace was nicely set so that the book progressed nicely, the way that the author provided snippets of information at a time without giving away too much built intrigue and the ending did not fail to disappoint.

Needless to say, this book had potential, but fell short of glory because of the characters in it. But I would not mind exploring other books by the same author.

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About The Author

Claire Douglas has worked as a journalist for fifteen years, writing features for women’s magazines and national newspapers, but she’s dreamed of being a novelist since the age of seven. She finally got her wish after winning the Marie Claire Debut Novel Award, with her first novel, The Sisters, which was followed by Local Girl Missing, Last Seen Alive and Do Not Disturb, all Sunday Times bestsellers. She lives in Bath with her husband and two children.

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