**3 stars**

The Wicked Sister is the first book of Karen Dionne’s I have read. Overall I liked it but did not love it. It was a slow start but did pick up. I did almost give it 2 stars but because I kept turning the pages quickly to get to the end I decided on 3.

What I liked: the lodge and forest setting, Rachel the main character

What I didn’t like: the fact that I guessed the real culprit pretty quickly, the slow start, the parents for being so intelligent yet SO DUMB. I guess they’ve never watched an episode of Dexter or read/watched The Bad Seed to learn anything about psychopaths.

I am not one to include trigger warnings in my reviews but fir a shorter thriller this one had a lot of violence: animal cruelty is the biggest but also the murder of children, guns, and stillbirth.

I liked The a wicked Sister enough that I would read another book of Ms Dionne’s.

**Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the e-ARC I received in exchange for my honest review, sorry it’s late.**

Rachel has just signed herself out of the mental institution she willingly committed herself to for the last 15 years. She remembers holding the gun when her parents were shot and killed 15 years ago. A local reporter has opened her eyes to the possibility that she may not be guilty of their deaths. She has no memory of the details surrounding her parents murders and she longs for answers. She travels back to the secluded log cabin her family lived in where her estranged sister now lives. She hopes that being in the house where her parents were killed, will help bring back the details and lost memories. I read and loved this authors previous book, The Marsh King’s Daughter. This book started off a lot stronger than it ended. The mystery surrounding the murders was intriguing. There were several decisions the characters made that didn’t add up. Many heavy themes were tackled within the book. Overall, this was a quick, easy, atmospheric and entertaining read that kept me flipping the pages, but not one that lived up to this authors previous work.

I am sorry for not reviewing fully but I don’t have the time to read this at the moment. I believe that it wouldn't benefit you as a publisher or your book if I only skimmed it and wrote a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for not fully reviewing!

Creepy and captivating! This is a deeply engrossing story about sisters, family secrets, fuzzy memories, and the absolute dread of a parent realizing she is raising a psychopath capable of murder.

So this book was dark and twisted and I really enjoyed it.

Trigger warnings: animal violence, murder, psychiatric hospitals, gun use, drowning, stillbirth.

I really enjoyed the alternating timelines told from Jenny’s perspective in the past and Rachel’s perspective in the present. It added to the story so that you were learning small pieces of information as well as Rachel was. I felt like this was a quick read but had so much going on. I honestly remember thinking about stopping at some parts because it was hard to read. Then having this moments where you wanted to shout at Jenny “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Overall this was really engaging and I couldn’t get enough. I loved the ending and it made me smile thinking about what was to come. Such a great capture of this family’s dynamic.

Sounds really really good, but another title I didn't get to. So many books so little time!
I always love a good psychological thriller, but there are so many of those released every month,.

I really enjoyed the writing style here; the story was told from two separate POV, one past, one present. However something about the story seemed rushed somehow. Jenny's chapters, which take place in the past, were more interesting to me than the current-day story. The vivid descriptions of the Upper Peninsula made me feel like I was in that cold forest myself. I would definitely read other work by this author.

The Wicked Sister is a psychological thriller with some strong horror elements added in. If you're looking for a suspense filled novel that will keep you up at night, look no further.

Rachel Cunningham committed herself to a mental hospital fifteen years ago because she believes she is responsible for her parents' deaths. She learns that she couldn't possibly have done it when she comes across details about the case that are new to her, so Rachel checks herself out determined to learn what really happened the night her parents were murdered. The story alternates between present day with Rachel and the past from the perspective of her mother leading up to the murders.

The writing is excellent and the character development is stellar. Filled with plenty of twists and a fast-paced plot, readers will be unable to put this one down. Be sure to check out The Wicked Sister today!

What a page turner! I was sucked into this crazy world created by Karen Dionne and unable to put it down. I wanted to hate the characters, but wound up loving them as much as I hated them!

Thank you Netgalley for allowing me to read this and give my honest opinion.

After shooting her mother, Rachel Cunningham has spent the last 15 years in a self-imposed exile living in a psychiatric facility. Now Rachel begins to question all of her memories. What if she is innocent and her sister is the wicked one? Dionne brings Michigan's Upper Peninsula alive and I was enthralled but flashbacks of their mother's story. Yet, the novel quickly reveals that Rachel's sister Diana is the psychopath of the story. Thus, the book rides on building toward an epic showdown, which, unfortunately, didn't quite pull off, falling into typical cliches for a mystery novel.

The Wicked Sister is a great read that features an intriguing plot that's full of suspense and will keep you guessing until the very end.

For fifteen years, Rachel Cunningham has believed herself responsible for her parents' deaths and has locked herself away in a mental hospital as punishment. With few memories of the day her parents died, the one thing Rachel is sure of is that she was the one who shot her mother. But when Rachel discovers new information that shows it would have been impossible for her to have been the shooter, she makes the decision to go home and find out what really happened that fateful day. But as Rachel begins to uncover the truth, she learns that the idyllic lodge where she grew up is more dangerous than she thought.

This book is told in alternating chapters of Rachel in the present and her family in the past leading up to Rachel's parents' deaths. I found the chapters in the past to be a bit more interesting solely because I was invested in finding out how Rachel's parents died. It's clear that their deaths didn't happen the way Rachel remembers, but beyond that we don't know what happened to them until it is revealed near the end of the book. Due to her jumbled memories, Rachel is somewhat of an unreliable narrator which made following her in the present an interesting experience. As Rachel slowly regains her memories or learns new information about her parents' deaths, we experience it alongside her. The ending of the book is suspenseful with a few interesting twists I didn't see coming and overall I was happy with the way the book wrapped up.

I intentionally tried to keep this review as vague as possible as I think a decent portion of my enjoyment was discovering the twists in the book as they popped up. As a warning I will say there is a fair amount of animal cruelty in this book. I had to skim those passages as it's not something I can read about. The book also includes taxidermy, a character is actively involved in the practice, which is another subject I struggle with, so I had to skim those parts as well. Definitely be on the lookout for those passages if these are subjects you have a hard time reading about. I'm glad I saw a review mentioning them which allowed me to keep an eye out for it while reading and jump forward several pages once it came up.

Overall I really enjoyed The Wicked Sister and I would definitely recommend it along with the author's previous book, The Marsh King's Daughter, if you're looking for a suspense novel full of surprising twists.

I thought that I would enjoy this one, as the premise was that of a thriller that I typically would enjoy reading. However, this book has way too much gory detail. The amount of death and the detail used to describe them was too much for me. This would be great for fans of horror, but not those looking for suspenseful thrillers. I am giving 3 stars just because someone else might enjoy it, as the writing was good. Just not the book for me.

Reading the synopsis of The Wicked Sister by Karen Dionne, I thought this sounded like a really interesting mystery - lots of family secrets and a somewhat creepy isolated setting. Unfortunately, this fell a bit short. I kept waiting for some shoe to drop or something to change about how we perceived what happened to Rachel's parents, but it ended up being pretty predictable. There were some elements that felt kind of random (Rachel being able to talk to animals?), or like they weren't fully developed (Rachel's friendship/relationship with Trevor). Overall, this was a quick mystery/thriller read that had some enjoyable moments, but it wasn't anything outstanding.

3/5 stars

Thank you to the publisher for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

The Wicked Sister
The reader never loses the sense of dread and danger in this book. Rachel abruptly checks out of the psychiatric facility when it is discovered she could not have shot here sister. It moves back and forth in time from the present to the journal that Rachel’s mother kept. That journal talks not just about Rachel, but about her psychopath sister as well. There’s plenty of guilt and a real sense of the spooky haunted house visage as Rachel returns to her girlhood home on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. I though the ending was not that plausible, that there was more emphasis on horror-movie than on a strong ending.

If you enjoyed The Marsh King's Daughter, you'll love The Wicked Sister even more; it's not "just another psychological thriller"; it's psychologically terrifying! Dionne draws you in, has extremely well-developed characters whose actions will have you on the edge of your seat, and a lodge with thousands of acres of forest that acts as a character itself. Her alternating perspectives and timelines aren't gratuitous; each moment in time and each character's recollection of events all culminates in the big finish! Lovers of Shari LaPena, Riley Sager, JP Delaney, Peter Swanson, B.A. Paris, and David Bell will be still be surprised!

Wow, what a unique story! We start out with Rachel, who is in a psychiatric facility (by her own choosing) because she believes she killed her mother. She quickly learns that everything may not be as it seems and she works to fill in the gaps in her memory to find out what really happened that day.

I was definitely drawn into this book, reading the entire thing in one evening! Without giving away any spoilers, one of the things I loved most about this book was that it took on a mental health diagnosis that I've never read about in a child before. I know it's a real diagnosis, I just never read a book that tackled it before. I loved getting inside the mother's head and really understanding how hard it would be as a parent to handle a child with that diagnosis.

I also loved the wooded setting and learning more about bears. I thought that was a nice aspect to have added to the story.

I will say that because so many thrillers that I read have unexpected twists, I kept waiting for and expecting huge twists with this book - and I don't feel like those huge twists ever came. I don't think that's a downfall - I don't think every thriller needs to have a twist. It's just something I noticed in myself as a reader - that I had an anticipation of a big twist that never came.

That's not to say that there weren't surprising revelations in this book. There certainly were. I felt sickened and saddened by several events that took place in the story. In fact, if you have certain triggers, I would certainly look into the trigger warnings for this book (I don't want to post them here, as I feel that triggers can sometimes be seen as spoilers).

All in all, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone that is a fan of thrillers and is fascinated by mental disorders and psychology.

Three years after her smash hit The Marsh King’s Daughter, internationally bestselling author Karen Dionne returns to familiar ground in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula wilderness with another psychological thriller.

THE WICKED SISTER is about a young woman named Rachel who has chosen to lock herself away in a mental hospital for 15 years, believing that she is responsible for her parents’ deaths when she was 11. But when she learns new details about the day they died, she goes back to her family’s sprawling log cabin on 4,000 acres of remote, pristine wilderness in a quest for answers—not realizing that every returning memory brings her closer to losing her own life.

The idea for the novel came about after Dionne read a news item about a toddler who found a loaded handgun in his mother’s purse and accidentally shot and killed her.

Full interview available in the August edition of The Big Thrill

This was the first Karen Dionne book I’ve read so I did not know what to expect and, boy, did this blow me away! What a page-turner! Fortunately I was on a beach vacation while reading this so I was able to finish it quickly. There were so many things that I loved about this. One was the remote Michigan Upper Peninsula historic hunting lodge setting. The descriptions of the cabin and the surrounding woods were so vivid that they were a character in and of themselves. It drew me in and made me want to visit this area.

The plot was a definite huge hit. The family relationships and particular dysfunction of certain family members was reminiscent of Baby Teeth and We Need To Talk About Kevin, both of which I also loved. The viewpoints alternated between daughter Rachel in present day and mother Jenny in the past.
The ultimate question the book explored is how Jenny and her husband died. Rachel has always thought that she killed her parents but new evidence brought to light leads her to think otherwise. This mystery propels the story forward at lightning pace and truly makes this unputdownable.

The third thing that was outstanding for me was the character development. Rachel’s character in particular was so unique and almost tangible. I loved that she was able to communicate with animals and found this element to be an excellent addition to the plot. Rachel’s sister Diana was also cleverly depicted, though not in the same way. All of these elements worked together to create an amazing work of psychological suspense. Karen Dionne’s books will definitely be on my to-read list from now on.

I was absolutely blown away by <a href="https://samesfoley.wordpress.com/2020/01/30/the-marsh-kings-daughter-review/"><i>The Marsh King's Daughter</i></a> earlier this year and was highly anticipating Dionne's newest release. Unfortunately, this one really fell short on expectations. If you want a mindless thriller with disturbing elements, please look no further. If you're looking for anything more than that, perhaps think twice.

I was unconvinced from this from the start; the premise that this woman spent 15 years institutionalizing herself because she thought she did something that could have been disproven by a single line in a police report is quite frankly absurd to me. There continued to be inconsistencies and hyperbole that would pull me out of the story completely. For one, Rachel grew up learning the woods like the back of her hand. She was a vegetarian, essentially a pacifist, and deified nature. So how am I to believe that she repeatedly chucks her cigarettes to the ground and leaves them there? I know this is such a minor point to nitpick, but it just goes so vehemently against her character that I honestly couldn't believe it! I saw the twist coming from a mile away, and one of the characters became so cartoonishly evil that it felt like Dionne wasn't even taking things seriously anymore.

Never mind the fact that I'm starting to tire of the psychopath child trope and this truly added nothing to the genre of thrillers that rely on it. It really seemed like most of the thrills relied on pure shock value. This does work to its benefit in some ways: it's difficult to put the novel down and it's a fastpaced read. Something dreadful is truly lurking around every corner here.

There was also a strange fabulist element integrated into this -- Rachel can apparently converse with animals. I thought at first that this was meant to skew the reader's judgment of her: is she <i>actually</i> insane? But it really seems to serve little purpose other than furthering the plot in certain areas and getting Rachel to where she needs to be. It really felt like something that should have either been left out or utilized more thoroughly by Dionne.

So, this didn't work for me at all I'm afraid. If you're looking for something fast and simple and are able to suspend your disbelief, this could totally be the book for you. But if the above elements would be an issue, perhaps skip this one this time around.

This book is really creepy. It pulls you in right away, but be prepared for a psychopathic daughter and how a family struggles to deal with her. How would you protect your family from your daughter? Are the parents in danger? Is her sibling in danger? Read on to find out how it turns out. A page turner.