The book starts sixteen years ago, Sylvie’s older sister, Persephone, disappeared and was later found murdered.

Sylvie is back in the town where she is from taking care of her mother. Being in her childhood home brings up memories of her sister and Sylvie decides she wants to start investigating her sisters death. She starts finiding out secrets buried within her family, grief of dealing with her sister's death and she rebuilds relationships that cause her turmoil.

I thoroughly enjoyed the character development between the three in this novel. The author did a great job at being able to understand the depths of their relationships. Although the plot was somewhat predicable, I still really enjoyed the mystery behind.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for providing me with an eGalley of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Wow. That's the word that best describes how I felt when I put my iPad down and had finished reading this book.

It was an easy read even though it was very dark. It was interesting to have a book where there was no lull in the action but I also don't feel as though I was overwhelmed by how the the book was constantly moving forward.

The ending was incredibly sinister and normally I would have been like "ew no, too far" but something about this book kept me wanting to read to the very end.

I would read anything by this author again.

Sixteen years ago, Sylvie’s older sister, Persephone, disappeared and was later found murdered. Sylvie is now back in her hometown to care for her ailing mother. Staying in her old bedroom that she shared with her sister, she begins dealing with the questions and guilt that have haunted her for years. As Sylvie seeks out answers she ventures down a path of discovering family secrets, restoring relationships, and facing the grief she’s been unable to process since her sister’s death.

It seems strange to describe a thriller as beautiful, and yet that’s the first word that comes to mind. The imagery throughout the book is vivid, and the juxtaposition of white snow to the dark themes of the story stood out to me. I don't feel that the basic plot was incredibly unique but the novel sets itself apart in its exploration of the relationships among Sylvie, Persephone, and their mother, Annie. The character development of these three women was extraordinary as was their complexity and the challenges in their relationships.

The Winter Sister is an enthralling novel and a strong debut which I enthusiastically recommend.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for providing me with an eGalley of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this book in return for my honest opinion.

I enjoyed the pace of this book. I thought Sylvie was a great lead character, one that needed answers and closure in order to move on in her life. Caring for her estranged mother is the first step in discovering what happened to her sister sixteen years before. Everything she thinks she knows about her sister's murder will be put to the test as more questions come up.

I liked the pace of the book, the sinuous twine of the story that isn't too convoluted or too simple either. It was a quick read as well, but not in a vapid mindless way.

This well-written story of the death of teenage Persephone was enjoyable but felt a little been there, done that. I was captivated by the book in the beginning and enjoyed reading it, though the plot left me wanting a little more. Overall this mystery will delight many readers and I’m glad I read it.

Thanks to NetGalley & Atria Books for the advanced review copy of The Winter Sister! This copy was provided in exchange for an honest review. The description of this novel had me intrigued, and it did not disappoint!

Sylvie is 14 when her older sister, Persephone, goes missing. Days later, 18 year old Persephone's body is found buried underneath snow, with signs of strangulation. The search for her killer is fruitless for years, and the novel centers on Sylvie's struggle with her perceived fault in the incident, as well as her strained relationship with her mother, Annie. Years after the murder, Sylvie returns to her childhood home to care for her ailing mother and revisits the past with a new enthusiasm to find the killer. Theories are tested and old wounds reopened, and the balance between thriller and familial drama really draws in the reader!

I finished this book in a day, I loved the pace and had to know what happened to Persephone. Sylvie is a likable main character and I rooted for her to track down the truth and find closure to the tragic loss of her sister.

I'm giving it less than 5 stars because I guessed the few twists in the story, and well before they were revealed. I wanted it to be more of a challenge, and since I had guessed the supposed shocking parts, I was a little let down by the final chapters.

I'm looking forward to reading more of Megan Collins, this was a strong debut!

For me, this book wasn’t really a thriller, it was more of a dramatic mystery that featured complex relationships between family members. That’s not to say it wasn’t good because it was.
This book definitely kept me interested because really, who doesn’t want to figure out “who done it”, but it was a little bit predictable. I gave it 4 stars because I enjoyed mysterious and secretive nature of the story and the way the author was able to portray the intricately broken relationships between characters. Great debut novel!

This was a quick and engaging read.

The story was about a girl who has to revisit her past as she comes home to take care of her sick mother. Her sister was killed and the murder was never solved.

The characters were well written and why I finished the book in a day. The plot was one I’ve seen many variations of and it ended up being fairly predictable for me.

Still this was an entertaining read and isn’t that what you want with a book?

I was absolutely consumed by this story. There are so many secrets that just kept unraveling and surprising me, I couldn't put it down. I had to read it in one sitting in order to move on with my day because I just had to know.

This was so beautifully written. I experienced the pain, frustrations and guilt trips of literally all of the characters, and for that, I applaud the author because it's rare for me to read something in which all of the main characters have so much depth and weight. I loved seeing how their stories were woven together as they all experienced the burden of carrying guilt for what happened to Persephone and how everyone coped with that said guilt differently.

This reminded me of another book I recently read and absolutely loved called The Night Olivia Fell by Christina McDonald. The Winter Sister has a lot of similarities to it but enough differences to make it feel like an entirely different reading experience. To be honest, the basic plot and premise of the story are very similar to many other recent books, but the story, characters, and the hardships they experience throughout are so well done and unique to themselves.

A great find, an impressive debut novel and a great read to feed my mystery-loving soul.

This was a well-written read. It is a story that is similar to others of the genre, but the writing is so enjoyable that it doesn't matter. It is about Sylvie managing the aftermath and mystery of her sister Persephone's murder. After coming home to care for her ailing mother, she chooses to find out what happened all those years earlier.

Megan Collin's writing is so excellent that I was surprised to find that it is a debut novel. I would definitely read any of her other future novels. It was hard to put this one down. 3.5/5 but the writing gets it closer to a 4.

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria books for the advanced reading copy.

The Winter Sister by Megan Collins is an impressive debut. I hadn't realized it was a debut until I Googled her for more books to buy.

I started this book only to look up and realize 3 hours had passed. From the opening line I loved the way Collins writes. The confusion,pain, and despair at the disappearance and ultimate murder of Sylvie's sister is how we are introduced to the story. From there you just have this nagging feeling that something sinister is lurking beneath the family. The pacing is perfect and the mystery worth waiting for.

The Winter Sister is haunting and written by an exciting new talent. I'll be recommending the novel and keeping my eye for Collins next release.

I rounded this up to 4, but I’d really say it was closer to 3.5.

Overall: I’ll say this: this was one quick read. I was engaged in the book the entire time. The writing was beautiful and I felt that the author gave just enough of showing and telling to satisfy the reader.

Characters: Though I didn’t like many of the choices Sylvia and Annie made, I didn’t complete hate them. Which is surprising because usually I HATE reading a book that is filled with unlikeable characters. So, this just attests to the writing. It was done so well that the characters, for the most part, felt pretty real. (Though, Annie’s character was a bit too much once her motivations were revealed.)

Plot: Ok, here’s why I feel like I’m kinda stuck in my rating. The plot felt very familiar. It feels like I’ve read this book story before but just with different names and location. For example, I read a book not too long ago that focused on the same guilt that Sylvie faced with the whole locking the window situation. It was the EXACT same scenario, except it was a friend vs a sister. Same deal with a murderer that was never caught and blah blah blamed herself. Once I noticed the similarities, I couldn’t UN-notice them so all I found myself doing was comparing this book to that one and finding it came up short at time. Like I mentioned above, I found some of the character motivations to be just too outlandish, particularly Annie’s. I mean, sure, I get the whole obsessive love thing, but come on? Shunning her daughter over the idea that she might lose her and then completing shutting out her other daughter when that actually happens? But other than that, I liked the quick pace and even though some of the twists were predictable, I still enjoyed the ride.

I hope to see something new by this author one day so I can see what else she has in store.

I’d like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for sending me the ARC in exchange for this review.

Tl;dr: The Winter Sister may start off on familiar mystery/thriller lines but veers deep and dark with its unflinching look at the devastation wrought by belief in all-consuming love, grabbing you by the neck and forcing you to look at the wreckage it makes.

The Winter Sister left me absolutely furious and despairing by the end--and I think that's the point of this debut novel. It doesn't want to soothe you with a happy ending or even a happy-ish one. It would rather punch you in the throat and hiss "Look!"

To which I say, "Yes, please!"

It does start off on familiar ground--thirty year old Sylvie, who lives in a careful bubble of nothingness with a job and life she's not that interested in, is summoned home by the aunt who basically raised her after Annie, Sylvie's mother, fell apart fourteen years ago when Sylvie's older sister, Persephone, was murdered.

It's for the reason you think--Annie has esophageal cancer, and will most likely die.

So Sylvie returns home, back to a mother who ceased to notice her or anyone or anything except vodka and pills after Persephone's murder. Sylvie doesn't want anything to do with her mother or the town she left behind when she went to art school.

Upon her arrival, her mother is not interested in her or her cancer treatment. Recently sober, she is, at best, sarcastic and rude. At her worst, she continues to do what she's always done for as long as Sylvie can remember--locks herself away in her bedroom and refuses to come out. These periods of rejection and isolation used to occur every month, and Persephone had named them the "Dark Days."

As for the town, it's still the same too--small, insular, and there's still no real effort to find Persephone's murderer. Sylvie isn't surprised by that either though. She's convinced Persephone's then boyfriend, Ben, was the killer--but that he will never be brought to justice because his family is "the" town family, storied, rich, and untouchable.

Ben is, naturally, still in town and working as a nurse at the hospital where Sylvie takes her mother for chemotherapy. In between hunting down a copy of Wuthering Heights for her mother to read, she deals with Ben, who insists he didn't kill Persephone, and thinks the creepy neighbor kid, Tommy, who lived nearby and was "obsessed,"did.

Yes, this all seems pretty standard. But here is also where Megan Collins goes deep and dark.

Let's start with Ben. He's not a bad guy who has secretly got a heart of gold and is really a big softie. He's a deeply messed up man who drifted into being a nurse after returning home to live with his father on the "family property" for money after deciding impoverished life on his own wasn't cutting it.

That doesn't sound so bad? Ok. Well, check this: Sylvie drifted into her job as a tattoo artist because she used to paint designs onto Persephone's bruised body after she saw Ben.

Yeah, but Persephone's secret lover/murderer was the one who really bruised her. Right?

Right?

Nope. No secret lover/murderer in The Winter Sister, and Ben put those bruises on Persephone. ( (spoiler reason) why he did it is interesting--we'll get back to it*)

Ben is one of the reasons The Winter Sister works--he does want to be a decent guy but has no idea how. A lifetime of being taken care of no matter what and messed up family dynamics have left him prone to feeling before thinking, and he's also never gotten over Persephone's death.

In short, he's a powder keg and Sylvie is the fuse.

Speaking of Persephone, Annie can't even bear to say her name, much less discuss her with Sylvie. Although when pushed, she reveals that she's done many of the (many) awful things she's done because she loved Persephone. In fact, she even pushed Persephone away when she was alive and favored Sylvie because she loved Persephone the best.

Yes. She totally did it, totally believes it was for the best, and can't understand how destroyed that makes Sylvie feel. (Though, to be fair, it's clear to even Sylvie that she ceased to exist to her mother as soon as Persephone went missing)

And that's the tip of the iceberg where Annie is concerned. Let's just say she puts the T in toxic parent, and could replace Narcissus as the picture for narcissism in the dictionary.

I want to talk about so much more about what happens, but I can't because (spoiler) and then (spoiler) and then (spoiler!!) and then the final showdown. That last one is obvious but it still works, especially in light of how (spoiler!! aka "hi! enormous and uncomfortable mess!!") is going to result in whatever peace may have been found by a lot of freaking out followed by what should be 87,545, 543 years in therapy but, given the world Megan Collins has created, is unlikely to happen.

But I can say this spoiler free--where most authors would have taken the genre plot and made Persephone's killer be who it is, there are very few authors who would have had the murder be so horribly, terribly meaningless.

Yes, I mean meaningless. By the time Persephone is murdered, the reason why she is has already happened (and often, and for months) and isn't, in the end, even really about her at all, which is one of the reasons I finished The Winter Sister feeling hollowed out and reeling.

Persephone dies because Annie is convinced she is part of a grand and tragic love story, one that caused her "dark days," one that has, in fact, colored most of her life, ruined Persephone's, and has driven Sylvie's so far into the ground I don't think she'll ever see the sun again. There's a reason Annie reads Wuthering Heights, and it's with Annie's belief that she's a modern day Cathy and (spoiler) is her Heathcliff that she manages to ruin her life and cause Persephone's death and ruin most of Sylvie's life.

One of the things that I don't like about Wuthering Heights is that it's regarded as a love story. I don't think it is. It's about obsession, definitely. It's also about two people behaving horribly to everyone around them and making the next generation* suffer. Persephone is the obvious sufferer, but in the end, I think the least damaged. By the time The Winter Sister ends, the two main characters have already suffered and well--I don't see an end to it in sight anytime soon. Annie might not have killed Persephone, but she doomed her by loving herself and her twisted version of love more than herself and her daughters. Persephone of myth got to return to the living every year, but the Persephone of The Winter Sister never will and I'm not sure Sylvie truly can herself. Ditto for Ben.

Okay, that was long even for me but The Winter Sister really got to me. A lot. Highly recommended.

Sylvie is fourteen years old when her eighteen year old sister, Persephone disappears and is found three days strangled to death. Who murdered Persephone? Could it have been Ben, Persephone's boyfriend who she would sneak out at night to meet up with and who was the last one she was with on the night she disappeared? Or could it been someone else?
Sylvie lives with the guilt of the night that her sister went missing. Sylvie locked her sister out by locking the window so her sister would get caught by her mother for sneaking around with Ben, who their mother did not know Persephone was dating.
Sylvie's mother starts to turn to alcohol and becomes a non-existent mother following the disappearance and death of Persephone.
Sylvie gets out of the town, but on her thirtieth birthday, she gets a call from her Aunt Jill about how her mother has cancer. Sylvie comes back to help her mother who she does not want to be around.
While being in town, she runs into Ben who is now a nurse. This sends Sylvie into looking more into her sister's death and finds out many secrets that could possibly solved the cold case.

In this modern take on the Persephone myth Sylvie, a tattoo artist living in Baltimore, travels back home to care for her cancer-stricken mother. She finds herself unable to resist revisiting the traumatic murder of her sister and the bizarre and jolting sudden withdrawal of her mother. This moody and spell-binding novel is an easy and fast read with lots of fodder for discussion.
Virginia Woolf said in A Room of One’s Own that “fiction in like a spider’s web, attached, ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.” The narrative in this story is attached to the Persephone myth in a similar way. It’s interesting to see how the author was able to use it as inspiration for this modern and compelling mystery through subtle yet unmistakable allusions.
Maybe the main characters could have been a little less sweet and sympathetic, despite Sylvie’s big “secret” from when she was a child. A little Gillian Flynn-style edge on her would have been nice. However that’s a small complaint. The Winter Sister is a page-turner that I really enjoyed.

Every action has a consequence. That's the main message that stuck with me throughout this novel.
The novel follows Slyvie 16 years after the death of her older sister, Persephone. Slyvie returns home to care for her distant mother, Annie, diagnosed with cancer. Annie was the most frustrating character for me. I couldn't connect with her and many of her choices were difficult to forgive. While the other characters just blended into the background. I wanted more of Ben.
Collins did a great job of keeping the reader guessing. I did connect the killer dots a little before the big reveal. Though this didn't take away from the twist.
Thank you Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC

Spellbinding! A sinister and slow-building plot with spectacular character development. I loved this! I was entranced by the mystery the entire time.

Sylvie is haunted by the murder of her sister, Persephone. The unsolved crime keeps Sylvie’s heart stinging with regret. Several years later, Sylvie returns to her hometown to help aid her mother who is ill with cancer. Back in the presence of the place she lost her sister so many years ago, secrets are unraveled and intensity builds.

This domestic thriller is filled with twists that strike you like a bitter winter’s wind. I thought this was a solid debut and I’m looking forward to reading more from the author in the future. I recommend this to those who enjoy an even-paced storyline alongside well crafted characters.

So many twists! Collins kept readers on their toes with her new release, The Winter Sister. The pace was thrilling, the characters were mysterious and full of emotion and depth.

Megan Collins wrote a lovely debut suspense novel. The premise is as you would expect for a domestic thriller. When Sylvie moves home to take care of her ailing mother, she finds that her sister's cold murder case may not be as cold as she thought. I enjoyed the book and the characters. Because of the way it was written, I was able to pre-determine a lot of the twists and turns which made it not as interesting of a read.

This book had an excellent premise and I really looked forward to reading it. However, there was little suspense when it came to the plot. The characters were under developed and I really lacked any kind of empathy for the main character, Sylvie.