White Bodies – Jane Robins

  3,5 Stars

Tilda and Callie are twins. But they are not much alike. Tilda is the beautiful, talented girl everybody loves. Callie is shy and likes to watch and observe her sister. She is a bit obsessed by her and wants to protect her.

As adults, Tilda is an actress and gained a bit of fame. Callie works part-time in a book shop. Tilda is still a very important person for Callie. Callie loves to spent time with her sister and hardly has a life of her own. Then Tilda falls in love with a man. Felix is good looking, successful and charming. Callie likes him at first and they include her in much of their activities. But as time goes by, Callie feels that Tilda is changing. She begins to find clues that Felix is harming Tilda. But Tilda is denying it. She is very determined that she loves Felix and is very happy. Callie finds a website for women who are suffering from an abusive relationship. She soon finds people to talk to and share her fears for her sister.

I have a bit of mixed feelings for this book. The story is not very new. I read a lot of stories about sister who have a toxic relationship. The writing style is good but I could not really connect to the story. What I did like was that is has a very weir character as a narrator. Callie is strange. She lives willingly in the shadow of her glamorous sister. She does not envy her, she just wants to be part of her life and be the number one person for her. She develops strange behaviors like f.e. she feels the urge to eat things which belonged to Tilda, like her hair or her baby teeth. It is really disturbing.

What I also liked was that feeling that something sinister is going on right from the beginning. The main characters are all not very likeable. They are all weird and have issues. But somehow I liked that. It made it hard to work out what was going on. I had an idea but I did not figure it out entirely.

The book has its flaws and the idea of the story is not new. It is full of clichés. Tilda is the extraordinary beauty who charms everyone and Tilda is the shy sibling who thinks she is ugly and fat but of course everybody else thinks she is lovely and pretty. But I enjoyed reading about those creepy people. The story is twisted and keeps you guessing. It was an easy read, nothing spectacular but a solid and entertaining read.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Are You Sleeping – Kathleen Barber

  3 Stars

„Are You Sleeping“ is a predictable psycho thriller with quite annoying main characters. Besides that, it is an easy and entertaining read.

 

Lanie and Josie are twins who estranged from each other years ago. The reason was the killing of their father. Her mother lost it after that gruesome event. She soon left and joined a cult and leaving her girls behind. Her aunt Amelia took care of them. Lanie handled this development with rebellion. She did drugs and booze. Josie wanted to be the nice girl everybody loves. But then something happened between the twins and they estranged. Josie travelled the world, never staying long at a place. Until she met Caleb. Now she has a life with him in New York. But he doesn’t know the truth about her family.

 

One day Josie learns about a podcast which is about the murder of her father. The neighbor’s son was convicted to be the killer. Lanie saw him that night shooting her Dad. But the journalist who runs the podcast says that maybe the guy was innocent. Josie goes paranoid. Then she learns about the suicide of her mother. So she returns for the first time in a century to her hometown.

 

The story is interesting and gripping. There is a family tragedy. A man was shot and one of his daughter witnesses it. His wife could not cope and went away to join a cult. She abandoned her children. Both children struggle but they get along somehow. Then this podcast happens and the mother suddenly committed suicide.  What’s this all about? What really happened?

 

I personally struggled with the main character Josie. And Lanie as well. They are both such drama queens. They make a spectacle out of themselves all the time. I know horrible things happened to them. But as a reader I think they were just annoying. All this throwing up, the ill-feeling, the not-sleeping, the drama. Josie started asking herself some questions a decade too late. There was just too much drama about the girls feeling ill and insomnia and horrible and there was too less focus of everything else and the story. That annoyed me and it affected my enjoyment of reading this book in a negative way.

This book is an easy read. Interesting story but I so disliked the main characters. Just too much drama.