I figured out the big twist about halfway through. This one should have come with a trigger warning about eating disorders and pedophilia. I don't know that I would have requested it had I known it dealt with those topics.

This book was a slow-burner for me. I had a really hard time staying interested in the beginning and almost gave up on the book. And to make matters worse, I had a difficult time connecting with the main character, Sam. It was probably halfway before the pace finally picked up and the story drew me in. I was able to figure out the mystery but there were some surprises thrown in.

Thank you to NetGalley, Thomas & Mercer and Ruth Dugdall for a copy of "My Sister and Other Liars" in exchange of an honest review.

Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of My Sister and Other Liars. I voluntarily chose to review this book and my opinion is freely given.

Sam is seventeen, literally just months away from starving herself to death. Safely ensconced in a ward designed to help people with issues similar to hers, Sam's therapist uses unconventional ways of trying to reach his patient. The events of eighteen months earlier, when Sam's sister Jena was brutally attacked, were the catalyst to Sam's problems, so will the young woman be able to make peace with the past before it destroys her?

Parts of this book were really good, especially the mental affects that eating disorders can facilitate. The eventual conclusion was telegraphed in a large way, as I guessed the ending early on in the book. Being a huge mystery/thriller buff, I found this part of the book to be less successful. The locked ward was not as restrictive as its real-world counterparts, but that can be overlooked because My Sister and Other Liars is a work of fiction. The book was good, but not as compelling as I was expecting. For that reason, I would be hesitant to recommend My Sister and Other Liars to readers.

Sisters Jenna and Sam are both in bad shape. Jenna was attacked 18 months ago and suffered a TBI. Sam is in a locked unit because of her anorexia. What happened and how will they reconcile? It's a good - if dark- read.

My sister and other liars by ruth dugdall.
Sam is in a special unit at the bartlet hospital. She is not eating. Why? What happened to get her that way?
Who attacked jenna and why?
A very emotional read. I really felt for sam. Shocked. Didn't expect that. 5*.

When I started reading My Sister and Other Liars by Ruth Dugdall I was drawn into what seemed like an intriguing story but somewhere along the line I lost my initial enthusiasm.   Though it was a good read, in my hands it seemed to drag and I became impatient to reach the end.  Having said that there were many elements I found interesting.   As readers we saw inside the ugly and distressing disease anorexia, the psychological mindset that leads some young girls (& occassionally boys) to starve themselves.    For many people this slow but progressive path to death is a way of suppressing memories, emptying mind and body, and gaining control over their own lives.   

In this instance 17 year old Sam Hoolihan is anorexic and has been hospitalised for 18 months.    Prior to being hospitalised her sister Jena had been attacked and suffered a serious brain injury.      That event had a dramatic impact in Sam's own life, and ultimately lead to the downward spiral which landed her where she is today.    Sam is now due to front a panel who will decide if she is ready for release.    The story is revealed gradually, during her daily sessions with her pyschologist.     She doesn't give up the words easily and the threat of food is used to get her to open up.   Alternating between her thoughts in the present day and the backstory, there was plenty of room for speculation about what Sam did, who attacked Jena and why.  Unfortunately I had predicted the culprit very early in the book and this probably detracted from my reading experience and ultimately my rating of this book.    

Overall a good read and I give my thanks to Ruth Dugdall, the publishers Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for this digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

The publisher provided me with the opportunity to read this in exchange for providing feedback. (via NetGalley)

Really engaging and well written read that was easy to get swept into. I read the first half in a few hours. I had my suspicions on on some of the plot points but I enjoyed the story nonetheless. I wasn't expecting the secondary reason Sam was in the hospital or part of the big reveal in the end. I thought the author handled the subject of anorexia well and was realistic on the portrayal of it. Definitely worth a read.

This is a very dark and disturbing psychological thriller.
I loved this book. I found it to be a slow burn in the first 40 percent of the book but even though it was slow, it was very interesting. I still had a lot of interest in the story. Then it really picked up and it then turned out to be a page turner. I loved the jaw dropping twists toward the ending.
The ending to me was a five star ending.


Sam is only sixteen years old and has anorexia. She is in a mental hospital. She just wants to die. She is there because of what happened to her sister in her past. Her sister has a very dark and sinister past. Sam is burying her secrets and is keeping everything bottled up inside. She doesn't want to remember what she did or what happened to her sister. To get released out of the hospital she has to tell a doctor everything that happened in her and her sister's past.

I learned so much about anorexia. I found it to be very interesting. Everything that these girls went through was so sad and how they were starving themselves. Sam's story was very traumatic. I always thought that anorexia happened because people just wanted to be skinny but there are other reason's why people are anorexic.

I thought the characters were done very well. My heart really went out for Jen and Sam.

I highly recommend this book to those that like a dark mystery and thriller.

I want to thank Netgalley, the publisher and Ruth Dugdall for the copy of this book for an honest review.

This novel is well written and the characterization of both characters comes alive on the pages. I was so pleased to have the chance from Netgalley to feast on this book. Even from the cover seeing how thin the character was I knew it was for me. I am fascinated by eating disorders, mental issues and what prompts our behavior. This book covers it all. Highly recommend

I've read a few books by Ruth Dugdall and have enjoyed them. One of my favorites was "Humber Boy B". So after reading the description for "My Sister and Other Liars", I was quick to hit that request button.

In eighteen months many things can change. This is especially true for seventeen-year-old Sam. Eighteen months ago, Sam was searching for ways to help her twenty-nine-year old sister regain her memories after a vicious attack. Now Sam is struggling to care about anything...

The first line of the book pulled me right in.

"My body is eating itself, my brain too, apparently"

This is one of the things Sam is learning in her eating disorder group. Her body is searching for sustenance anywhere and causing serious damage. But that's not scary to someone with a severe eating disorder, it actually offers comfort. Because the thing they most want to do......is disappear. Sam is in a group with four other girls but feels very alone. She hasn't seen any family or friends for eighteen months.

On her sixteenth birthday, Sam's dad gave her a vintage camera. A present that Sam loved! It belonged to him when he was a boy. He gave it to Jena as a gift, years ago and now he was giving it to Sam, which understandably upset her sister.

"You can't give Sam that camera! It's not right, Dad. you promised you wouldn't. How can you do that to me?"

Sam had always been jealous of the shared passion for photography her sister and father had. But her father said Jena had lost interest so he was giving the camera to Sam. Her sister stormed out and not long after was attacked by an unknown assailant and left for dead. Jena had no memory of what happened or who attacked her, so the police had little to go on. Sam was going to do whatever she needed to do to help her sister remember.

Now eighteen months later, Sam is still hospitalized on the Ana (Anorexia) Unit. She's been there the longest out of the five girls. February 1st is an important date. A board meeting to discuss Sam's progress. She could be released if she's well enough. While Sam wants to be free to go home, she's not able to give up this control. A new psychiatrist wants to help her and uses some unorthodox ways to get Sam talking. It's hard for Sam to talk about what happened. Control and secrets are things Sam understands well. But the memories keep intruding, and no amount of starvation is going to keep them away.

Can Sam finally open up about everything that happened?

We learn how the other girls ended up on the unit. It was horrifying when these girls would praise each other for how low their BMI was. Congratulating each other for having a feeding tube!

"Lucky, she says. Now you don't even have to eat."

It made me sad but it was very enlightening. I thought I knew a lot about eating disorders but I feel like I have an even better understanding now. The author has obviously done her research.

While a lot of the book deals with Sam's illness, the mystery surrounding what exactly happened the year before is also slowly revealed.

This was an incredibly gripping read. So many questions. Where are Sam's friends and family? Why is she refusing to let anyone visit? Where is Jena..... and who was responsible for her attack?

As well as ....what was Sam's part in all of this? What will happen when everyone's secrets are finally revealed?

I recommend you read the book and find out!


Thank you, Netgalley and Thomas & Mercer for providing an advanced readers copy of this book for me to read in exchange for my honest review.

A delightfully twisty novel that leaves you guessing even up to the final chapters. This book was not a pretty one by any means. By 'pretty' I mean the way the author showed the raw and real plight of anorexia and other things (which I can't mention without spoiling). The characters were really complex and there was so much going on in this book it almost felt like several different stories, however, it worked.

Recommended, that's for sure!

Great book! Kept me guessing until the end! I will definitely be reading more from this author!

What an amazing mystery thriller. It was dark and compelling and I don't mind admitting that all my guesses about how this would end, were wrong! It was a surprise at the end and left me thinking about the clever clues that were left throughout the book leading to the ending. Well worth the read.

Sam has been in the hospital for eighteen months, her body is shutting down, a welcome escape from the past and the memories that haunt her. Sam and the other patients are starving themselves, attempting to control their lives at any cost. Sam's past may be the cause, but also the cure. Through flashbacks we learn about Jena, Sam's elder sister, confined to a life in hospitals after an attack leaves her brain irreparably damaged. Desperate for the answer, Sam begins her own hunt for the criminal that stole her sister from her, but what she finds is only a dark room full of deceit.

"Once I tell Clive the next part of the story, he'll agree. It's not just that I'm mad, I'm bad too.
Sick to the core."

Ruth Dugdall's My Sister and Other Liars is haunting and realistic; two sisters forever changed by an event that comes to life in the flashbacks Sam shares in therapy. Told entirely from Sam's perspective, her anger at herself, at everyone around her, bleeds from the words as she revisits the awful events that lead to her starvation. Sam is a difficult character, her hostility makes her unlikable, but her true lack of control makes you desperate for her health. She's naive, too youthful for her hardened outlook and her story breaks down those around her. Sam's perspective is narrow, her will to live is slim, but Dugdall's writing shows that those around her care and have compassion. Dugdall breaks down the disease, highlighting the many roads that lead to eating disorders for not just Sam, but the secondary characters she lives in treatment with. She showcases the highs, the lows, and the progress made as Sam faces her disease, her sister's accident, her locked up memory, and the heartbreaking reality of other's sicknesses. The events leading up to her treatment begin as hazy memories, but soon Sam is desperate to reveal her discoveries she made as amateur detective. What starts as a slow read soon takes readers on a fast-paced twisted adventure, as twists and red herrings reveal some, but not all secrets. The ending is a surprise, a chilling unveiling of the real truth that readers will be unable to guess.

"I feel unlocked, like my heart is open and warm, and fluttering out are feelings and thoughts that had been frozen."

My Sister and Other Liars is a horrifying tale, it's achingly painful to read, but it is every bit deserving of the praise it has received. Ruth Dugdall tells a twisted tale of secrets and lies, enticing the reader with a plot that doesn't reveal the truth until the very end. Dark and mysterious, this psychological thriller is hard to put down. It's honest take on eating disorders and the events that psychologically break down Sam makes My Sister and Other Liars a novel I highly recommend.

I enjoyed this book a lot. The plot is gripping and the pace is great, once I began reading I was absorbed. I have to admit the identity of the assassin was of no mistery to me since almost the beginning, and almost halfway I got who Sam really was [saying no more as I want it to be spoiler-free] and about the why... I got half of it right, but the whole truth was even worse!
That said, it doesn't mean the author is previsible, just that I love to guess and try to follow all the hints that are given so I can make deductions. Some times you got it right, other times you don't.
I also loved the story, or better yet, stories developing on the anorexic unit. Those were very touching and it shows the author has done her homework getting information and such. Sometimes I didn't know what I prefered: the parts of the hospital or the what-happened-to-Jenna ones, good thing the author gives us half and half on each chapter! haha
The characters are well rounded, very much alive and quite relatable, but for the "bad guys". Those deserve death by blo*dy castration. But even them are really well crafted.
This is a very good book, honestly. If you like mistery, solving a crime, adolescence and mental health... it has a bit of everything!

My Sister and Other Liars is an eye-catching title. Who are all the liars, and what lies do they tell?
Ruth Dugdall’s psychological thriller addresses anorexia and some of its underlying causes in the portrayal of Sam, a seventeen-year-old girl who is hospitalized for treatment following the commission of an unnamed crime. The psychological issues that led to her eating disorder were used as her defense. When we meet Sam, she has been hospitalized for eighteen months. Her case is coming up for review, and she must begin showing progress in her therapy sessions if she is to be released.

Initially, I found Sam to be hostile and quite unlikeable. She does not want to get better. She wants to starve rather than cooperate with therapy or eating or even establishing friendships with the other “friends of Ana”. I found myself wondering, why not just kill yourself instead of enduring a slow death by starvation? But as Sam’s story begins to emerge, it becomes apparent that it’s about control – control and denial. Eighteen months earlier, her much-older sister Jena was brutally attacked. She suffered a brain injury, which involved memory loss and seizures. Sam became frustrated with what she perceived as lack of desire on the part of the police and her parents to find her sister’s attacker. This made her feel powerless. She began investigating on her own. She also stopped eating. This not only helped her to regain some sense of control, but it also allowed her to push away the feelings that were gnawing at her – the pain of her terrible memories of the attack as well as the secrets she uncovered along the way.

Everything is revealed from Sam’s perspective as we get flashbacks while she meets with her therapist, Clive. At first, he appears unsympathetic, but as Sam begins to open up, we see that he does want her to get better. Step by step, Sam takes us through the stages of the attack, her visits with Jena in the hospital, and her actions as she tries to learn who was responsible for hurting her sister.

The story unfolds quite slowly, which makes for lukewarm reading for a time. However, as Sam does a gut check, she digs more deeply into her memory, events emerge in the telling. There are situations that tangle and turn in several directions. I should have seen the final twist, but I was immersed in the story as told by a seventeen-year-old narrator, and I didn’t question her version enough to wonder about other possibilities.

A couple of things bothered me slightly. First, there were a lot of references to Jena’s “fits”. I realize that this is how many laymen refer to seizures, but even the doctor referred to one of the seizures as a “fit” in one instance, and I found that unacceptable. I was also rather surprised that Sam didn’t seem too preoccupied with her weight, as many with anorexia are. She simply seemed not to care about her appearance at all, and I wondered how common this is. I do think that Ms. Dugdall got many things right about the disease – the problems in the home, self-esteem issues, or the history of physical and/or sexual abuse. I found it interesting that when one of the younger girls admires Sam, what Sam sees this as “thinspiration”, Sam is appalled by her hero-worship. “It’s not strength. It’s sickness,” she tells her. Even though she can’t convince herself that she is getting better, it is obvious that she has made progress.

Will that progress allow her to be released when the review board meets? Will the lies that Sam has kept stuffed deep down inside finally come to the surface of her psyche? Will her mind and soul be free so she can heal? Do we learn if Jena’s attacker was brought to justice? The final chapters of
My Sister and Other Liars are hard to put down! I am not always a fan of psychological thrillers, but this one was worth reading!

Thanks to NetGalley, Thomas & Mercer, and the author for providing me with a read-for-review copy.

4 stars

Excellent book, it kept me on the edge of my seat for the entire read. Highly recommend

MY SISTER AND OTHER LIARS is a standalone dark psychological thriller by talented author Ruth Dugdall. I have read several books by this author and each time was very impressed with her amazing writing skills, that I jumped at this one when it became available on NetGalley. Another winner!

This is the story of two sisters, Sam and Jena. Seventeen-year-old, Sam is in a mental hospital undergoing treatment for anorexia. She won’t eat or see her family, and is starving herself. But why? Jena is Sam’s older sister, a woman in her twenties. Jena was viciously attacked, some eighteen months ago. This overwhelmed the whole family, and Sam needs to find out the truth.

“Anorexics lie, everyone knows that. Her need to control everything, even in the way you blame yourself”

“Jena’s brain was badly damaged after the fall. She may never retrieve what she has lost.”

Slowly the reader gets to learn about the events that led Sam to be institutionalized. Sam recounts the horrific events that led her to being institutionalized 18 months previously.

Sam’s therapist is helping her confront her memories. But the road to recovery is a dark and dangerous one. Sam has not only been lying to her doctors: she’s been hiding dark secrets from herself. But now Sam must uncover the lies from the past and discover the truth!

My Sister and Other Liars is not an easy book to read, as it deals with dark horrific events that led to Sam being institutionalized. The story is believable as are the characters and the book is riddled with twists, turns and red herrings. I was thrown by that final twist…and did not see it coming!

Don’t miss out on this special little jewel…you will definitely not be disappointed! Highly recommended for my psychological thriller lovers! Highly recommend!

I want to thank NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for this ARC.

I have now read several books by this author and the connection between them seems to be the tone, which is very dark. This one partially takes place in a unit for anorexics, that in itself is difficult to read, but the reason for Sam being there is heartbreaking. We know she is there for something she did as well as her anorexia, which was used as a defense, but we don't find out exactly what until the story unfolds. She tells her story to the psychiatrist who is trying to help her get released, and I liked trying to follow the clues in her story to where they lead.

Not too much into psychological novels these days but do enjoy the novelty of this author and her plotlines. Tightly plotted and we'll written, I love all the twists and turns, never quite sure where this is going, but enjoy trying to guess. A foray into the dark side of tortured young people, but at the end there is a glimpse of hope.

ARC from Netgalley.

While the story seemed to start slow for me, once the action started speeding up I couldn't put this down!