The Wicked Sister – Karen Dionne

‘The Wicked Sister is massively thrilling and altogether unputdownable’ KARIN SLAUGHTER

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 as punishment for the terrible thing you did when you were a child.

But what if nothing about your past is as it seems?

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.

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…

Karen Dionne is the author of the #1 international bestselling, award-wining, psychological suspense novel The Marsh King’s Daughter, also titled HOME in the UK, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in the US and in 25 other languages. Karen enjoys nature photography and lives with her husband in Detroit, Michigan’s northern suburbs.

My Review:

I loved Karen’s debut novel The Marsh King’s Daughter (now retitled Home) so was very excited to see a new book was out and the blurb really appealed to me as I love books based in psychiatric facilities and featuring murdering kids… (don’t judge me!).

The Wicked Sister is a very dark and disturbing story told from two points of view. In the present we meet Rachel, now 26 years old and has lived in a mental institution since she was 11. She’s there because 15 years ago her mother and father were brutally murdered and she’s convinced she’s responsible for their deaths and deserves to be locked away.

The other main narrator is Rachel’s deceased mother Jenny, telling her story from the past, from the moment she met her husband to her untimely and violent death and boy, oh, boy.. if you like creepy, damaged and dangerous children then you will LOVE this book.

I don’t want to give anything away or spoil the book, so I will be brief and to the point – this is a really chilling and gripping story of how far we will go to protect our children, throughout the book I had a very uncomfortable feeling of dread and discomfort (which I actually LOVE!). It’s a complete page-turner and I would definitely recommend it to fans of dark, psychological thrillers.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

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