Jess went missing on our way home from school. We were sixteen. Dad’s golden rule was Never walk home alone. But I was in a hurry and she was flirting with boys. She just vanished. No word. No sightings. Nothing. My family destroyed.
I blame myself. And I won’t ever give up looking for her.
Each year, on the anniversary of Jess’s disappearance, a bunch of flowers is delivered to our home, along with a note. Two words: I’m sorry.
It’s the only clue we’ve ever had as to what happened. Until the day I get a text: I found her.
And in my desperation to know the truth, I’m walking into a carefully-laid trap . . .
The truth about what happened to my twin is even worse than I could ever have imagined.
DISCLAIMER: Please note this is a revised edition of Lies We Tell Ourselves.
Good heavens, this book was all over the place, and I don’t just mean the timeline. Yes, the story jumps between present day and the not-so-distant past instead of simply starting in the past and moving forward chronologically, which I honestly think would have made the entire book far less confusing. But beyond the structure, the characters themselves were an absolute hot mess.
To begin with, I struggled to sympathize with anyone, which is unfortunate when one of those people is your main character. Paige, along with the two remaining adult members of her family (her mother and her fiancé Jamie) made it incredibly difficult to stay emotionally invested. Paige openly admits she’s a helicopter parent, which could have been understandable given the traumatic loss of her sister when they were teenagers. Instead, she takes things to such an extreme that it becomes frustrating rather than sympathetic. She refuses to set a wedding date and even tells Jamie she will never marry him because her sister isn’t there to be part of it. While grief manifests differently for everyone, this felt excessive, especially years after the fact.
Then again, when you look at her mother, Paige’s behavior starts to make a little more sense. The woman still blames Paige for her sister’s disappearance because their “number one rule was we were never to walk alone,” despite the fact that Paige regularly biked to work by herself during that same period. Her mother’s behavior swings wildly between comforting Paige and snapping at her with comments like, “you know my feelings on this,” making their relationship exhausting to watch unfold. And Jamie? While I might have felt sorry for him dealing with Paige’s anxieties, he managed to irritate me just as much as she did. He knows exactly how she reacts to perceived danger, so inviting her to join him and their son at the park only to lose track of the child while scrolling on his phone not only felt like a disaster waiting to happen, but also entirely avoidable.
Adding to the chaos were a number of characters and subplots that seemed to exist purely to pad the page count. A volunteer at Paige’s workplace is caught in a trafficking sting, yet nothing meaningful ever comes from it. Various therapy group attendees are introduced but contribute little to the overall narrative, and their scenes often slowed the story to a crawl. Gabrielle’s parents frequently interrupt Paige at work as well, and while their anger is understandable, their repeated appearances felt more like distractions than meaningful additions to the plot.
As for the villain, I clocked him long before anyone else did. Between the last names and the character’s behavior, the reveal was so obvious to me that it lost any sense of suspense the author may have intended.
The plot itself only added to the confusion. The timeline surrounding Patient A’s hospital stay makes very little sense; we move from night to day to night again, only to later be told she has been hospitalized for just twenty-four hours. Then, without warning, Patient B is introduced, turning an already confusing narrative into a full-blown muddled mess. We aren’t initially told there is a second woman; instead, new details suddenly appear that contradict everything we know about Patient A’s condition. Considering how crucial Patient B becomes to Paige’s storyline, it would have made far more sense for her introduction to be clearer; and to arrive earlier in the narrative.
I understand what the author was attempting to do structurally, but the execution made the story far more complicated than it needed to be. And for a book titled The Sister Under the Stairs, there is, somewhat astonishingly, no hidden room under a staircase. In fact, staircases are barely relevant at all, mentioned only in passing descriptions of unrelated locations, which made the title feel oddly disconnected from the story itself.
One final thing that stood out to me was the ending, which felt strangely like a cliffhanger. This was particularly odd considering there appears to be another book featuring Detective Meri called The Girls in the Basement, which I’ve already read and actually enjoyed slightly more than this one. That left me wondering why these books aren’t clearly labeled as part of a series, because they certainly feel connected.
All things considered, if another installment featuring Meri and her search for the truth about her sister appears, I will likely pick it up. As for the author’s other works, however, I’m still undecided on whether I’ll give those ones a chance or not.
Posts
Post a Comment
0 Comments