‘Bad Sister’- By Sam Carrington (Part 1)

Stephanie is scared for her life. Her psychologist, Connie Summers, wants to help her face her fears, but Connie will never really understand her. Stephanie’s past has been wiped away for her own protection. Stephanie isn’t even her real name. But then, Dr Summers isn’t Connie’s real name either.
And that’s not all the women have in common. As Stephanie opens up about her troubled relationship with her brother, Connie is forced to confront her own dark family secrets.
When a mutilated body is dumped in plain sight, it will have devastating consequences for both women.
Who is the victim?
Who is to blame?
Who is next?

I devoured and thoroughly enjoyed Sam Carrington’s first book ‘Saving Sophie’ so when I was offered the chance to participate in the blog tour for ‘Bad Sister’, I grabbed the opportunity with both hands and even did a little happy dance, which wasn’t that pretty.  Thank goodness only my dogs witnessed it.  Anyway I digress, back to ‘Bad Sister’.  I was not to be disappointed as for me, ‘Bad Sister’ is better than ‘Saving Sophie’ but more about that later.

I have to say that I took to the character of Connie from the start although I was a bit suspicious about some of her character traits.  However my view of her had changed by the time I got to the end of the book. Connie Summers is a psychologist with her own practice.  She used to work for the Prison Service but she was forced to leave her role following an incident.  You don’t find out the whole reason all at once but you are drip fed clues throughout the story and when you piece them together, you get a real sense of what happened.  Connie is struggling though because following the discovery of a very mutilated body at the prison gates, the spotlight is thrown back on Connie.  I’m not telling you the reasons why because that would spoil part of the story.  Following the increased media attention on Connie, one of her clients Stephanie, who is on the Witness Protection Scheme, decides that she needs to see another psychologist because the spotlight on Connie, might mean that the nasty men find her (Stephanie).  Connie convinces Stephanie  and Connie soon comes to realise that her and Sam are more alike than she could have imagined.  Both have obviously been traumitized by past events, both feel that their personal safety is under threat and both feel isolated.  But are they both telling the truth?  Well that’s the $64,000 question…..

I have to say that in my opinion, ‘Bad Sister’ is superbly written, with more twists and turns in the book than you would find on a snakes and ladders board.  I rather smugly thought that I had figured out what had happened to who, who was telling porkie pies and how the story was going to end.  However, I was thrown a curveball and sent down another path entirely.  This story certainly kept me guessing right up until the last moment.  Reading ‘Bad Sister’ became seriously addictive and I found that I just could not put the book down.  It was as if my Kindle had glued itself to my hand.  The pages were turning that quickly that it was almost as if they were turning themselves and before I knew it I had finished the book, which I had conflicting feelings about.  I was pleased to have finished it because I knew how the story ended but I wasn’t pleased because I was enjoying the author’s writing style so much, that I just wanted the story to continue.  Well you can’t have your cake and eat it I suppose.  The book certainly hit the ground running and maintained the speedy pace throughout.  I became so swept along with the story that I was almost shouting at the pages, warning the characters about what was coming up for them and arguing with various characters.  I have far too much of a vivid imagination and I do become too involved when I am reading a good book.  Oops.  There were times when I was reading this book that I almost had to read through my fingers and hold my breath because I genuinely feared what was going to happen next.  I was so desperate to finish the book that I stayed up until the early hours and put off going to sleep, much to the disgust of my eldest Labrador.

In short and just in case you hadn’t realised by now, I absolutely, totally and utterly loved reading ‘Bad Sister’ and I can’t wait to read more from this very talented author.  I would definitely recommend this book to others.  ‘Bad Sister’ will certainly keep you guessing.  I award this book 5* out of 5* but I would have awarded it more stars if I could have because I enjoyed the book so much.