Title: Blood Sisters
Author: Jane Corry
Publisher: Penguin

[Synopsis]

Three little girls set off to school one sunny May morning.
Within an hour, one of them is dead.
Fifteen years later, Alison and Kitty are living separate lives. Kitty lives in a care home. She can’t speak, and she has no memory of the accident that put her here, or her life before it.
Art teacher Alison looks fine on the surface. But the surface is a lie. When a job in a prison comes up she decides to take it – this is her chance to finally make things right.
But someone is watching Kitty and Alison.
Someone who wants revenge for what happened that day.
And only another life will do…

[My Review]

Blood Sisters completely drew me in to its world, right until the last page. It focuses on two main narratives – one in the present day, showing the two very different lives of sisters Alison and Kitty, and another which takes the reader right back to the years leading up to the accident which changes Kitty’s life (and her family’s too). I really enjoy narratives that switch like this, and especially with multiple key characters so you see different sides to the story.
The characters themselves are interesting and well-rounded, despite at times despising Alison and the way she thinks and acts, from the way she treats the ‘secret’ that people seem to be keeping right through to smaller things like the snooty, judgmental way she treats the prisoners – though I admit some of the prisoners are truly awful!
The story itself is a little slow to get started, but once it gets going it it’s really gripping. The story presents not only the accident itself and the secrets accompanying it but the way that the sisters and parents interact with each other. There’s plenty of unease and mystery, and though I saw some of the twists coming there was plenty which took me completely by surprise! At no point did I feel even remotely bored with Blood Sisters, as it kept me gripped throughout.
This is a great novel from Jane Corry, whose other novel – My Husband’s Wife – I also hugely enjoyed too. [Read my review here].

[Rating: 4/5]

Many thanks to Penguin for providing a copy of this novel on which I chose to write an honest and unbiased review