Review: Blood Sisters by Jane Corry

Title: Blood Sisters by Jane Corry
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, Suspense
Length: 352 pages
Book Rating: B

Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through Penguin’s First to Read Program

Summary:

From the bestselling author of My Husband’s Wife, a new thriller featuring three girls, one accident, and a lifetime of lies.

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.

Review:

Blood Sisters by Jane Corry is a suspenseful mystery that is filled with secrets and lies from a childhood car accident that occurred fifteen years ago.

Allison Baker is in her thirties but she is still haunted by the car accident that left her younger half-sister Kitty James with severe brain damage. An artist who teaches at several colleges, she is barely making rent since she is helping her mom pay for Kitty’s care. When she learns about an artist in residence job at a local minimum security prison, Allison applies for the position. With much trepidation, she begins working there three times a week but she is rather nervous due to some threatening letters and phone calls she has been receiving. Beginning an unexpected romance with Clive Black, Allison is cautiously optimistic about her future when she forced to deal with her unresolved past.

Allison is wracked with guilt over the circumstances surrounding the car accident. Her relationship with her Kitty was never easy and she is unable to allow herself to do the things her sister will never get to do. Her entire life changed irrevocably after the accident and Allison cannot seem to put the incident behind her.  Instinctively knowing the threatening notes and phone calls are somehow linked to the accident, Allison avoids dealing with them as she begins her job at the prison.

Kitty was extremely spoiled and her childhood friendship with Vanessa turned her into  cruel, spiteful young girl. She deliberately sabotaged some of Allison’s school projects and never let her social outcast sister forget she was unpopular. In the days leading up to the tragic car accident, Kitty and Vanessa were on the outs but her friend picked that day to try to salvage their friendship.

The chapters primarily alternate between Allison and Kitty’s points of view. Allison is a sympathetic character who cannot seem to give herself permission to be happy. Kitty is trapped in her mind, unable to verbalize her thoughts and prone to violent outbursts when she is unhappy. She does enter into a relationship with a young man from the group home and their relationship has many unintended consequences.

With a slow building storyline and a sympathetic but sometimes frustrating lead character, Blood Sisters is an engrossing mystery. Who is responsible for the threatening notes and phone calls to Kitty? Is it possible someone knows the truth about the car accident? With breathtaking plot twists, Jane Corry provides a stunning array of answers to these very intriguing questions. The novel ends with a jaw-dropping revelation that is guaranteed to shock readers. An outstanding read that I highly recommend to fans of the genre.