Sister Dear by Hannah Mary McKinnon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Thank you to the publisher, MIRA, for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
I kept putting off writing this review for as long as I could and now, I’m in a real time crunch. I’m tired, uninspired and a headache is starting to form right behind my eyes and I just want to curl up on the couch and watch cartoons.
Yup, it’s one of those days.
I kept procrastinating on this review, because I don’t know what to say about it. I don’t know how I feel about it. Maybe I’m feeling slightly misled and confused about the story.
I had a different idea of what this story is supposed to have been about based on the little blurb that promoted it.
I kept thinking “alright, one more chapter to set up the stage for things to really pick up,” but that never happened.
At the end of the digital copy of my book there was a Q & A section with the author, who referred to the characters she creates as “messed up”.
That would make perfect sense after having read this story. Without giving too much away, I can confidently say that most readers will very soon find out that none of the characters are stable.
They are all in their own way messed up and dealing with some stuff.
Regardless of that, I found the protagonist inconsistent. Her motivations based on her personality traits made little sense the further along the story progressed.
The secondary characters were interesting enough, but not very likeable.
When it comes to the plot of the story, I have to say I got lost. I kept asking myself what it was attempting to be. It got so tangled up in the protagonist’s self-reflections that most of the story got left behind.
This brings me to my biggest point of confusion. I was under the belief this was a mystery/thriller story, yet most of the book felt like a drama. I could see elements of the psychological thriller, but why did it focus so much on every single little thought the protagonist had?
There were big portions of the story that solely focused on the protagonist’s internal narration and nothing else. Then the reader would get a little bit of excitement to keep their attention long enough to distract them from abandoning the book altogether only to have a slow make-over happening.
I half figured out how the story would end way before it was over, and the ending did not really make up for the rest of it.
Overall, I’m giving the story some credit for me finishing it, but it wasn’t on-the-edge-of-your-seat entertainment.
I may suggest it as a slow burn sort of read.
About the Author
Hannah Mary McKinnon was born in the UK, grew up in Switzerland and moved to Canada in 2010. After a successful career in recruitment, she quit the corporate world in favor of writing, and is now the author of The Neighbors and Her Secret Son. She lives in Oakville, Ontario, with her husband and three sons, and is delighted by her twenty-second commute.
