Veena’s review of The Secret Sister by Brenda Novak
Romantic Suspense published by MIRA 28 Jul 15
I picked this book up believing it to be a romantic thriller, based on the back blurb. Unfortunately, it turns out to be a family drama showcasing the good, bad and ugly in relationships. The suspense element doesn’t kick in until half way through the book and that part of the story, as it unfolds, is almost anticlimactic, in my opinion. The redeeming light in the story is the character of the little girl who’s been blind since birth.
Maisey, struggling with depression after having lost her baby to SIDs, newly divorced, broke and unable to feel any sparks of her writing and illustrating talent, has returned to her island home to lick her wounds. Afraid of coming under the thumb of her controlling mother while she tries to find herself, she retreats to a beach rental owned by her family, a place of which she has happy childhood memories.
Her closest neighbor Rafe has been hired by her mother to restore the summer rentals, which were damaged in a storm. Bad boy Rafe has grown up and become a responsible single father to his blind daughter. The red hot chemistry that seems to have been merely banked since he took Maisey virginity as a teenager flares up hotter than ever. Maisey seems to be such a mass of contradictions, rebuffing Rafe’s help while at the same time jumping into his bed at the merest excuse.
The story has loads of family drama with Maisey’s dysfunctional family relationships on one end of the spectrum and Rafe’s family on the other end. Maisey’s brother is an addict and elicits no sympathy from this reader as he abandons Maisey after picking her up from the airport and leaving her in a cottage with no furniture, only to show up days later when she’s unearthed a box of photographs that seem to suggest that they might have had another sibling.
The search for the missing sister is somewhat unremarkable and the conclusion not as mysterious as I hoped. The little girl is truly a bright and shining light in this story, lightening the plot and interjecting much needed cheer in the story. Rafe’s relationship with his daughter is heartwarming.
This is a well-written story but too dark and slow paced for my liking.
Grade: C
Summary:
Did she once have a sister? Has her mother lied all these years? Why?
After a painful divorce, Maisey Lazarow returns to Fairham, the small island off the South Carolina coast where she grew up. She goes there to heal—and to help her brother, Keith, a deeply troubled man who’s asked her to come home. But she refuses to stay in the family house. The last person she wants to see is the wealthy, controlling mother she escaped years ago.
Instead, she finds herself living next door to someone else she’d prefer to avoid—Rafe Romero, the wild, reckless boy to whom she lost her virginity at sixteen. He’s back on the island, and to her surprise, he’s raising a young daughter alone. Maisey’s still attracted to him, but her heart’s too broken to risk…
Then something even more disturbing happens. She discovers a box of photographs that evoke distant memories of a little girl, a child Keith remembers, too. Maisey believes the girl must’ve been their sister, but their mother claims there was no sister.
Maisey’s convinced that child existed. So where is she now?
