REVIEW: BLOOD SISTERS, BY JANE CORRY

 

Three little girls set off to school one sunny morning. Within an hour, one of them is dead.

Fifteen years later, Kitty can’t speak and has no memory of the accident that’s to blame. She lives in an institution, unlikely ever to leave. But that doesn’t keep her from being frightened when she encounters an eerily familiar face.

Art teacher Alison looks fine on the surface. But the surface is a lie. She’s struggling to make ends meet and to forget the past. When a teaching job at a prison opens up, she takes it, despite her fears. Maybe this is her chance to set things right. Then she starts to receive alarming notes; next, her classroom erupts in violence.

Meanwhile, someone is watching both Kitty and Alison. Someone who never forgot what happened that day. Someone who wants revenge. And only another life will do. . .

 

My Thoughts: Alternating narrators, Alison and Kitty, reveal the story in Blood Sisters. Dual timelines flash back to 2001, when an accident happened, to 2016, when Alison and Kitty are dealing with events in very different ways.

From the beginning, we are aware that something led up to that accident, something that still haunts both sisters. Alison buries her feelings in her art…and occasional cutting.

Kitty, unable to speak, has flashes of memory, but is unable to express any of her thoughts.

Even when, in moments we see in 2001, we learn about what happened, there is also a deep and underlying darkness that has not come forth. What are the characters hiding?

In the beginning, I found the story slow and sometimes confusing. I didn’t warm up to the characters until we began seeing the moments from the past…and I realized the depths of rivalry between the sisters. As I kept turning the pages, I was captivated by finding out just one more secret. There were so many, and so many surprising twists and turns. By the end, I kept waiting for the final one that might reveal the unexpected darkness in each of them. 4 stars.

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