SYNOPSIS:
She thought she'd buried her past. But what if it's been hunting her this whole time?
From the bestselling and award-winning author of The Marsh King's Daughter comes a startling novel of psychological suspense as two generations of sisters try to unravel their tangled relationships between nature and nurture, guilt and betrayal, love and evil.
You have been cut off from society for fifteen years, shut away in a mental hospital in self-imposed exile as punishment for the terrible thing you did when you were a child.
But what if nothing about your past is as it seems?
And if you didn't accidentally shoot and kill your mother, then whoever did is still out there. Waiting for you.
For a decade and a half, Rachel Cunningham has chosen to lock herself away in a psychiatric facility, tortured by gaps in her memory and the certainty that she is responsible for her parents' deaths. But when she learns new details about their murders, Rachel returns, in a quest for answers, to the place where she once felt safest: her family's sprawling log cabin in the remote forests of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
As Rachel begins to uncover what really happened on the day her parents were murdered, she learns—as her mother did years earlier—that home can be a place of unspeakable evil, and that the bond she shares with her sister might be the most poisonous of all.
MY THOUGHTS:
I loved this dual timeline novel told from Rachel's point of view and that of her deceased mother. I was fascinated to find out what really happened on that wintery day that led to the murder of Rachel's parents. The horrors that unfolded, to the lead up to that fatal day, were both shocking and disturbing, as too was the day itself.
Being a mother I felt a lot of empathy towards Jenny and the situation she was in. No parent wants the news that their child is unwell and having to deal with a demanding child with behaviour issues is such a strain mentally and physically.
I was immediately drawn to Rachel and felt a lot of sympathy for her. Imagine believing you were responsible for shooting both of your parents! I was fascinated with her belief that she could communicate with the animals. I did question whether this was a sign she was still mentally unstable or whether it was a symptom of being isolated from society for so long or whether she did in fact have a special connection with animals. This element I felt added to the overall suspense of the novel as I found I was always second guessing Rachel, not sure whether she was a reliable character and one I could trust.
And then we have the wicked sister Diana. The villain of the story. What was really interesting was her relationship with Jenny and how Jenny tried to always love and protect her as any mother would. Dionne's writing is so emotive and thought-provoking that although I wanted to hate Diana I felt compassion instead towards her and her family.
I adored the setting which was very atmospheric and added to the tension of the story, as too did the nod to Grimm's fairy tales which weaved throughout the book. Nature played a strong part in this novel which I found bewitching and mesmerising. This was definitely the page-turner I was hoping it would be; it was chilling, creepy and down right gruesome! Many thanks to Catherine Burke and Little Brown Uk for gifting me a copy of The Wicked Sister. A truly magical book with a lot of evil running through it.