A good old book review - (I feel like I am still at school!)

'Sister' by Rosamund Lupton

Not heard of the author before? No, I hadn't either.

It is gratifying to report therefore that Rosamund Lupton’s emotionally powerful, debut novel more than matches up to the hype it has received courtesy of its Richard & Judy endorsement.  This cleverly worked psychological thriller about the skeletons lurking in the cupboard of what seems at first to be a fairly standard family, is both compelling, haunting and tragic.

Sister is written in the form of a letter from a young woman to her missing, assumed and feared dead, sister and Lupton’s concise and convincing narrative style allows their turbulent childhood to unfold through a slow-burner of small detail and intriguing allusions to past events. Guilt, grief, death, suspicion, psychological illness and obsession all play defining roles in this ambitious and exciting first novel.

Beatrice Hemming  jumps on the first flight home to England from her New York residence when her mother phones to say that younger sister Tess, a student at a London art college, has disappeared. Despite a five-year age gap, the two girls have always been close and Beatrice , the older and more grounded of the two sisters, knows everything about her younger sister – or so she believed. But now Tess has been missing for four days and the police fear the worst.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Beatrice is discovering how little she actually knows of what has been happening to her sister and is totally unprepared for the revelations she must now face.

The police, Beatrice’s fiancé and even her mother start to accept that they have probably lost Tess forever, but Beatrice embarks on a dangerous and at times slightly disturbing, quest to discover the truth about her sister - whatever the consequences.

While the police set the motions going and we slowly become acquainted with the family’s history, Lupton takes us to the heart of a complex web of relationships and provides some interesting twists and turns along the way, not least the startling conclusion.

Sister is an impressive first novel for Luption, which intelligently and subtly, combines a crime story with a sad and moving tale of domestic strife and upheaval.