The Night Sister

This review can also be found on my blog.

Jennifer McMahon has been a little hit-or-miss for me. I absolutely adored The Winter People but felt The Invited wasn't quite what I was looking for. Fortunately, The Night Sister put her writing back on track for me. This is a creepy little novel that takes place in Vermont, where a mystery is unfolding over three different generations, all tied closely to The Tower Motel.

I thought the time jumps were handled quite well and I suffered minimal confusion with them. I also quite liked most of the characters, although I felt the relationship between Piper and Amy was a little queerbait-y and wished there had been more to it (this was also something I struggled with in The Invited, but that may just have been my reading of it). The horror itself was handled well, it was spooky but not terrifying. And the way the plot unfurled was great, I didn't see the twists coming and wasn't sure how things would end until they did.

Overall, it was definitely an enjoyable book and a quick read. I'd definitely recommend it and will be reading more of McMahon's work in the future.

Such fun. Having read and thoroughly enjoyed The Winter People, I was hopeful and this paid off. Solid storytelling is a foundation that cannot be substituted.

Deliciously creepy and chilling. If you've been looking for a good thriller, pick this one up.

I had this on audio and found myself in a position in which I either listened to nothing for hours or I listened to this. This won, but only by a slight margin. There are many things that I super disliked about this story, but what I disliked the most was the narrator. This woman's voice. Uhg. I could forgive her for calling it a “bar-ette” but I cannot forgive her that Sylvie sounds like an 8 year old seductress throughout the entire book. Don't get me wrong, she's a self-absorbed a-hole who is abusing her kid sister, but she's no temptress as a little kid. Margot sounds like an annoying 4 year old-even as an adult. It didn't help that Margot acts like one the entire book.

Amy- I just didn't get her. Rose clearly suffered from being the not-favorite child. JJ is a freakin stalker (that is NOT sexy. EVER. It's sick. It's NOT romantic or normal) and Piper has never progressed past that one day in her life. She even has a ringtone on her cellphone from the same time period. So, we have a bunch of people who never grew up. Oh, oh and I have to say what really, really rang untrue was the fact that these three women had not spoken since they were 12 but now, suddenly, only Piper and Margot knew Amy well enough to care enough to investigate her death. Please. Margot lived in the same town for all those years, for crying out loud. When someone does not talk to your for 20 years, YOU ARE NOT FRIENDS.

What a hot mess. Add to that a “scary” find that is something out of a choose-your-own adventure book and you have another MEH read.

I must say that for five minutes I misunderstood and thought they had found Fenton dressed up in the blue dress with a blonde wig lying dead in the tower and part of me was interested for the first time all novel, but no, that was just my mind inserting things. Sigh. And what the frack was the point of the father's affair? who cared?????

I must remind myself to not read McMahon. This is the second one I've read and I think, what it is, is that she writes a really good premise. Then the story just doesn't deliver.

What a book! This book is destined to take you on a crazy ride!

Rose is convinced her sister is shape-shifting, a mare, as her Oma calls it. As she explains what a mare is and what they are capable of, she becomes more and more convinced that her sister Sylvie is a mare. As the story unfolds, it follows Rose's daughter Amy and her friends, Piper and Margot as they try and uncover the mystery of Sylvie's disappearance, and the strange happenings on the grounds of the motel. Piper and Margot are called back into the story line after several years have passed and Amy is accused of murdering her entire family, save one, her daughter, who managed to escape through a window in her room. But the mystery is still there, and the 29th room is still quite undisovered. Does it exist or is it a myth? The mystery only deepens and there seems to be one person who can answer the questions, but she seems very reluctant to talk to anyone.
This story makes you pay attention as it flips between the past and the present. What a story you are in store for! This book will keep you on the edge of your seat the entire way through!

Disclaimer I don't read much “horror” although this didn't scare me much. I thought the characters were fairly weak and not very interesting. The premise was interesting but fell flat for me.

I really enjoyed this one, kept thinking this is so predictable - everyone said there was this big twist I'd never see coming - there was, smacked me, and pissed me off that I didn't see it sooner! LOL I'd recommend this to anyone who loves a good mystery, this one spans more than 50 years... you travel back and forth from different points of view in different times. Overall very enjoyable even if the ending didn't happen they way I thought it ought, closer to the tragedy at the end of “Women in Black”, still worth every minute.

This was fine for a quick (somewhat predictable) thrill, but I much preferred The Winter People.

Since this was my first novel by Jennifer McMahon, I really had no idea what to expect when I picked it on Netgalley. It sounded rather intriguing, and I like dark mysteries - especially when ther's a hint of the supernatural.

And I was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed reading it. There was nothing predictable about this book - and it's rare that I don't figure out what's going to happen at the end quite early on. The Night Sister was written from the various perspectives of several characters, so we never got quite the whole story. Instead, we got snippets from each person's experience. Looking back, it's clear to see how the ending was foreshadowed but while reading I was totally wrong (when I wasn't in the dark). I loved how McMahon seamlessly took us between three different timelines. It would be easy to get confused with that kind of complexity, but I always knew what was happening and when it was happening.

I ended up closing the book (or rather, turning off my iPad) before I went to bed because I was worried about reading about blood and monsters just before falling asleep. That's silly because it really wasn't that scary - but it was so suspenseful that I stayed on the edge of my seat. Who killed Amy? What happened to Sylvie? Is Rose really crazy? Are there really ghosts? And what is the 29th room?

Luckily, every single one of my questions was answered in the end. I hate it when books don't answer all of the questions they raise - but in this case, I got very satisfying closure.

The book I keep thinking of as comparison is Gone Girl - but that's not quite right. There's not a twist of that magnitude, and the plot has virtually no similarities... but I can't shake the comparison. I think it's because it's dark, it does involve murder, and there's a mystery that you're trying to solve before you get to the end.

I thoroughly enjoyed Night Sister, and you will too if you're a fan of suspenseful mystery. This may have been my first novel by McMahon, but it certainly won't be my last.