The Good Sister

Sally Hepworth's novel, The Good Sister, is billed as a psychological thriller. I don't know that I'd necessarily agree. There was plenty of psychological fodder, but to me thriller makes me feel like I'm going to sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for something terrible to happen. I just didn't feel that way reading The Good Sister.

I did, however, enjoy The Good Sister from the first page to the last. It was an easy to read novel. And while I thought it was somewhat predictable, I was really curious to see how Hepworth was taking the story from point A to point B. And I was also really curious about how it might conclude.

Rose and Fern are twin sisters in their early 30s. Their mother had "an accident" when the girls were teens and it doesn't seem as though their childhood was particularly good. Now, Rose is married and desperate to have a baby. Fern has sensory issues, is single, lives a very regimented life. But she gets the idea that perhaps she can have a baby and give it to Rose. Fern knows she'd never be capable of raising a child on her own. Only problem is, Fern doesn't date.

Rose is some sort of interior designer and Fern works in a library. Her life is very structured. She eats dinner with Rose three nights a week, does yoga every morning, visits their mother once a week. Until... homeless Wally walks into Fern's library. There's just something about Wally.

At the start, the reader is left to wonder who is the good sister and who is the evil sister. As I said, I figured that out pretty early on and my interest that kept me turning the page was trying to understand why she was the bad sister and how the story was going to move forward.

My book club selected this novel and I'm looking forward to discussing.

What's kind of funny is that I'd recently read The Reading List, a story that takes place in a library. And lots of this story takes place in the library where Fern works. I love a good library story!

The Mother-in-Law

Reflecting on Sally Hepworth's mystery (?) thriller (?), The Mother-in-Law, now that I've finished reading it, this was probably not the best book for me to read at this time. (For the record, I'd call this family fiction since it didn't really fit my definition of thriller or mystery.) I figured, oh, I won't connect. I've been married for 26 years - over two husbands - and I've never had a mother-in-law. But little did I know when I started this book that while reading that my one remaining uncle, the uncle I've been closest to, would die one day ahead of the anniversary of my mother's death.

In this novel, Lucy has had a difficult relationship with her mother-in-law, Diana, from the moment they first met. Lucy admires Diana for her charitable work and admires the love that Diana and her father-in-law, Tom, have for each other. No matter what Lucy does, Diana just doesn't warm up to her or seem to even like her at all.

Diana and Tom have vastly different world views, yet their marriage works. They have opposite personalities, seemingly opposite values, but somehow, their marriage works. Lucy's husband, Ollie, and her sister, Nettie, have interesting relationships with their parents. Lucy and Ollie have three children while Nettie and her husband, Patrick, are desperate to have children. That causes friction all around.

Early in the book, Diana is found dead. Did she take her own life? Was she murdered? We read the story from alternating perspectives. The story, as it unfolds, is an interesting one.

What really spoke to me was the following reflection of Lucy's after her father tries to comfort her after Diana's death.

Even as an adult, it's easy to forget that your parents are people. Now, it occurs to me that of course he's been there. My mother's death had come right on the heels of Dad's mother, my nana. It's not something I'd thought much about back then, after all, my dad had been a grown-up and I was just a kid. And Nana, as far as I was concerned, had been old (sixty-one). But it was only a year later, almost to the day, when Papa, Dad's dad, dropped dead of a heart attack. He had been sixty-seven.

This isn't my normal type of book to read but it engaged me right away and kept me engaged toward the end. If life ever gets back to normal, I look forward to discussing this one with my book club.