This book has 384 pages. The fact that I sped through it in less than half a day should let you know it is a totally involving thriller, with a family dysfunctional enough to put the fear of god into even a dedicated Coronation St watcher. Add a strong female journalist, suffering from PTSD after covering news in Aleppo and the story gets good confusing and I couldn’t put it down until the last mystery was solved. An excellent excellent read, if slightly over the top in places- but a good ride all along. Highly recommended! ( )

I loved this book! It should have at least been nominated for a Goodreads award. The book was full of twists and turns that surprised me. I could not put it down. I loved the surprises. Kate and Sally were characters that were hard to like. Paul was the only sympathetic character in the book.....
The characters eventually become more understandable. That is part of what makes this a good book. The author develops the characters in surprising ways. ( )

I started My Sister's Bones one lazy Sunday afternoon and could not go to sleep that same night until I had finished it. The book was glued to my hand from start to finish and, although I might have had suspicions about certain people, I certainly wasn't expecting the story to take the direction that it did.

Kate is a war reporter who was on assignment in Syria when her mother died. She didn't make it home for the funeral, leaving her sister Sally to make the arrangements with the help of her husband, Paul. When Kate returns home, she finds Sally drinking herself into oblivion leaving Paul at the end of his tether. Sally has an awful lot to cope with so I can understand her turning to alcohol to numb her pain. Sally was a teenage mum, giving birth to her daughter, Hannah, but after a drunken argument, Hannah left home at 16 never to be seen again.

Kate moves into her family home and it becomes clear quite quickly that she is suffering from PTSD. She has flashbacks and nightmares of her time in Syria, so when she hears a young boy crying in the night she is determined to rescue him. Kate tackles her neighbour, Fida, about the boy but Fida claims that there aren't any children living in the house. Then Kate spots a young boy in her garden during the night and follows him into next door's shed only for him to disappear. With insights into the cause of her PTSD, the reader is naturally drawn to the conclusion that Kate is hallucinating. But is she? When one day she wakes up with blood on her hands and no memory of how it got there, I really didn't know what to believe.

Absolutely impossible to put down, My Sister's Bones will have you questioning every single sentence that you read. It is an exceptional debut and an impressive psychological thriller that really gets inside your head, making it impossible to tell fact from fiction. There are a multitude of threads to follow and untangle and I felt like I had held my breath until the very last page was turned. I could write so much more about this book but writing any more than I've written would spoil some of the surprises. I have no doubt that My Sister's Bones is going to be a massive hit when it is released in 2017. Make sure you look out for it as you really don't want to miss this one!

I received this book from the publisher, Viking, in exchange for an honest review. ( )

My Sister's Bones by Nuala Ellwood slowly builds into a suspense-laden mystery with very unexpected twists and turns.

War correspondent Kate Rafter's return to her childhood home following her mother's death contributes to her increasingly fragile mental state. Her recent experiences in Syria are horrific and the events leading up to her last assignment play a fairly large role in her declining emotional stability. Kate is suffering from extensive post traumatic stress disorder which makes her an increasingly unreliable narrator when she begins seeing and hearing things that cannot be corroborated by anyone else. Much of her story is revealed through her sessions with Dr. Shaw and no one is quite sure what to believe about Kate's recounting of extremely traumatic events that have recently occurred.

Kate's narration comes to an abrupt and shocking end and the perspective then switches to that of her younger sister, Sally, who is a raging alcoholic. Their relationship is badly fractured but Kate make a valiant effort to get through to her sister on her visit home. Sally consumes copious amounts of wine and spends her days in a drunken stupor as she laments the rift with her daughter, Hannah, whom she has not seen in several years. Her husband, Paul Cheverell is incredibly patient with her but their marriage is definitely breathing its last gasp. After a surprise visitor appears on her doorstep, Sally finally sobers up long enough to remember a desperate request from Kate. Will she then uncover the truth about whether or not Kate's experiences at their childhood home are real or imagined?

A dark, twisted and incredibly atmospheric tale, My Sister's Bones is an intriguing mystery that is initially somewhat slow-paced but dramatically hurtles to a twist-filled and shocking conclusion. Nuala Ellwood's extensive research and subsequent portrayal of the devastating effects of PTSD are hard-hitting and incredibly realistic. Kate is a sympathetic character whose intentions to expose the damages of war are noble and eventually take a horrific toll on her psyche.It is impossible to predict what direction the storyline is going until the absolutely jaw-dropping plot twist. From that point, the novel moves at a breakneck speed in the aftermath of stunning revelations. An outstanding debut that I highly recommend to fans of the genre.
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"ARC; A riveting psychological thriller. Kate and Sally grew up in an abusive household with an alcoholic father and ineffective mother. Kate escaped as a war journalist in Syria, and Sally to an empty home in the suburbs, drowning her losses in a bottle.
When Kate is home after her mother's death, and estranged from her sister, she thinks she sees a boy in her garden & thinks she hears the boy at night. But, jumping back and forth, is it PTSD, hallucinations or real?" ( )