Saturday, July 4, 2015

The Night Sister (Jennifer McMahon)

Jennifer McMahon, along with Kate Morton and Jodi Picoult, is one of the authors I most look forward to reading new books from.  Her Island of Lost Girls was reviewed the very first month I began this blog six years ago, and I continue to love her novels to this day.  There are very few authors nowadays writing such suspenseful fiction that scares the you-know-what out of you, and McMahon is one of those; her latest, The Night Sister, is no different.

The Tower Motel stands in ruins, and it is here where a family (except for their little girl) is killed in a most brutal way.  We know that Amy, the mother of this family whose grandfather built the motel (along with the tongue-in-cheek Tower of London next door), saw something coming for them before they all were brutally murdered.  However, it's widely thought in the community and by the police that Amy was the one who slaughtered her family.  Depending on the time period, there have been many secrets at the motel: in the '50s, it housed sisters Rose (Amy's mother) and Sylvie (Rose's sister); Sylvie mysteriously disappeared and was never heard from again, thought to have run away to California to make it in movies.  When Amy is a teenager, she tries to uncover what really happened to her Aunt Sylvie, with the help of her friend Piper and Margot, Piper's little sister.  Now adults, Piper and Margot try to make sense of what happened to Amy and her family.

The thing I love most about Jennifer McMahon is that her books are so satisfying.  Nothing is left open ended, everything makes sense when you're finished, and you're scared to the nines while reading. 

MY RATING - 4