Syndrie
Blending indigenous lore with a modern day murder mystery, “The Sleeping Sisters” gives us a unique story that you’ll probably find hard to predict.
The mystery aspects of this novel work really well in my opinion. There’s just enough unreliable narration to make you question everything you think you know about the story, while also managing to keep a steady pace up as more and more details are revealed. The supernatural elements weaved in also do a great job of muddying the truth and making it more difficult to predict the culprit early on, which I was very pleased about! Overall I was very happy with the way the story developed and definitely satisfied with the ending as well!
I was originally going back and forth on if I should rate this 3 or 4 stars, but eventually settled on 3 stars because there were multiple times when I felt the story was just too vague — mainly with Fortuna’s POV chapters. She’s clearly written in a way that’s supposed to confuse the reader and make them wonder if they can trust her, but too many parts of her perspective felt too much like a fever dream instead of simply being confusing enough to make you question the truth. But because this seems to be an intentional choice I wouldn’t consider this to be poor writing or anything since it definitely meets the goal of confusing the reader, it’s really more just a matter of this style not really agreeing with my personal taste.
So if you enjoy mystery type novels and don’t mind a little bit of insanity going on inside your narrator’s mind, then this would probably be a great pick for you!
(I received an advance review copy of this book from the publisher, Little, Brown and Company, via NetGalley and I am leaving this review voluntarily. All opinions are my own.)
Blending indigenous lore with a modern day murder mystery, “The Sleeping Sisters” gives us a unique story that you’ll probably find hard to predict.
The mystery aspects of this novel work really well in my opinion. There’s just enough unreliable narration to make you question everything you think you know about the story, while also managing to keep a steady pace up as more and more details are revealed. The supernatural elements weaved in also do a great job of muddying the truth and making it more difficult to predict the culprit early on, which I was very pleased about! Overall I was very happy with the way the story developed and definitely satisfied with the ending as well!
I was originally going back and forth on if I should rate this 3 or 4 stars, but eventually settled on 3 stars because there were multiple times when I felt the story was just too vague — mainly with Fortuna’s POV chapters. She’s clearly written in a way that’s supposed to confuse the reader and make them wonder if they can trust her, but too many parts of her perspective felt too much like a fever dream instead of simply being confusing enough to make you question the truth. But because this seems to be an intentional choice I wouldn’t consider this to be poor writing or anything since it definitely meets the goal of confusing the reader, it’s really more just a matter of this style not really agreeing with my personal taste.
So if you enjoy mystery type novels and don’t mind a little bit of insanity going on inside your narrator’s mind, then this would probably be a great pick for you!
(I received an advance review copy of this book from the publisher, Little, Brown and Company, via NetGalley and I am leaving this review voluntarily. All opinions are my own.)