Wow it’s been awhile since I’ve read a book this captivating! Excellent family drama that I couldnt put down. The author makes you literally guess until the last sentence. Very well done!

Sisters Lauren and Kate and their families meet for lunch every Sunday when a young woman named Jess arrives holding the DNA results claiming she is their half sister. As events start to unfold, it's clear that everyone is hiding secrets. Will the truth about their perfect family unravel everything they know and love?

I really enjoyed Sandie Jones previous book The Other Woman and I felt this one was a step up. The relationship between Lauren and Kate was one of my favorite parts of the story. Feelings of jealousy, lack of communication and normal sibling rivalry made the storyline and characters intriguing and relatable. I felt the "twisty" moments were a little predictable and I don't know if I would put this under the headline of "thriller", but it was an intriguing and interesting mystery.

I really enjoyed it as it was a good quick read and one that kept my attention from beginning to end!

Trigger Warning: Infertility

Thank you to Netgalley, Minotaur/St. Martin's Press for this free ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The story started out slow and a few of the characters (cough Lauren cough Rose!) seemed clueless and naive that I cringed every time they were mentioned. The plot was still interesting and the writing so fluid that I had to keep reading. The twist at the end was a bit predictable but I didn’t figure out the full twist so that was a fun surprise.

📖 The Half Sister - Sandie Jones
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
320 pages
📝How many secrets a family can keep? Do you really know your parents and siblings? When a stranger knocks on the door a family destiny is completely changed. Jess is a 22 years old who is looking for her father. She believes her father is Harry, Rose’s dead husband and Lauren and Kate’s father. Is she right? What really happened in the past? I really liked this book and I recommend it for all domestic thrillers fans.

Loved this one! Sandie Jones is one of my favorite authors and this is yet another book that I couldn’t put down! Thank you!

The Half Sister is a book full of lies, secrets, jealousy and love

Jess knocks on the door at a family dinner and claims to be Lauren and Kate's half sister.

Nothing is the same for that family from the moment on. Lauren believes her , Kate is suspicious.

Lauren and Kate are different as two sisters can be.

There is way to much more to this story than meets the eye.

Who can you believe, who you can your trust.

Twists and turns will keep you reading as fast as you can.

Then there is the final twist . I did not see that coming.

Don't miss out on this entertaining read!

Thanks to Net Galley and St Martin's Press, Minotaur Books for a an intriguing read.

This definitely had potential but it just didn't do it for me. It was just back and forth speculation and no real substance. I was disappointed

I love Sadie Jones. I was a big fan of her book The Other Woman (a Reese Witherspoon pick). This one was decent, but I don’t see it being a Reese endorsed read. It was an easy, quick thriller but I wouldn’t write home about it (if I ever left home, that is ...).

What happens when a stranger shows up in the middle of family dinner and announces she’s your half-sister? Kate and Lauren are at odds with their reaction. Kate takes the path of denying the possibility. Her father, who has recently passed, was a good man. A family man. He would never. Lauren, has always had a less than harmonious relationship with her father, and is quick to accept the stranger’s word as truth. •



It quickly becomes apparent that this family isn’t the unit they thought they were. There are secrets. They basically all have one. Which secret will tear this family apart? •


This wasn’t a bad book. I did enjoy it. I just knew the ending about half-way through, so it made the rest of the book predictable once my suspicions were confirmed as correct. •

This is my second book by this author, the initial being The First Mistake , and while I enjoyed the suspenseful moments and cliff-hanger chapter ends in that one, The Half Sister fell short in both in it's promoted genre (thriller), and in the execution of it's synopsis.

More aptly described as a family drama, this narrative begins with an interrupted dinner to beat all others, as sisters Kate and Lauren and their mother Rose are visited by Jess, a woman claiming to be their half-sister and deceased father's third child. Dual perspectives are given to the sisters, as we follow a paranoid and disbelieving Kate, and an elated and sympathetic Lauren. Family secrets are brought to light, while long-held assumptions are put to rest. And inbetween it all, we follow a pair of woman who are struggling with the things that are all too (unfortunately) common: infertility and domestic abuse. The mystery behind Jess's appearance is just that, mysterious, and never quite ventures into the thrilling.

I want to say that I might have appreciated The Half Sister more if it had a contemporary cover, and simply promised a saga of sorts; a hidden family past that those involved wanted to keep hidden, but alas, the genre wasn't the only issue. Jones can write a book, that is not a debatable fact. Many individual moments in this narrative were fraught with the right amount of tension; with dialogue fitting to it's cause. The entire book, as a whole, was compulsively readable, but broken down there were holes too big to ignore, and repetition that had me skimming instead of reading.

The biggest qualms came in the way the triggers were handled, and the slippery way the final twist was revealed. Lauren spent the entirety of the book in a domestic abuse situation, one in which was handled too loosely and distractedly in my opinion. There was a scene in which she has chance to explain to her mother exactly what's been happening, but never fully does. I found this to be a reoccurring theme in the book as well: characters hiding things for no logical reason. By the time the big reveal arrived, there were more questions than answers, and I closed the book feeling like I missed something that I was supposed to understand 5-6 chapters prior.

With all of that said, I'll round out the trio of Jones' work by reading The Other Woman next, and will continue picking up whatever she puts out. This one just didn't work as well for me, sadly.

Kate and Lauren are sisters who have nothing in common on the surface. One is a career-oriented and seems to live a glamourous and carefree life with her husband while the other is married to a jerk with kids and an unhappy life.

But on Sunday they all sit at their recently widowed mother's home for dinner. They are all still grieving. Kate was especially close to her father while Lauren has always been closer to their mother, Rose.

What no one knows is Kate has been trying for years to conceive a baby. And Lauren would just as soon leave her husband and escape her life.

All of that is the backdrop for the one Sunday dinner when there is a knock at the door and a woman stands there asking for their father. Who she says is her father as well. It seems she has uploaded her DNA and found a match with Lauren. But has she? Can they believe anything she says?

These sisters could have avoided all of this if any of them had bothered to talk to each other. But secrets are what families do. And sometimes they are what blows your world apart. And everyone in this book is keeping secrets!

There were some issues I had with the DNA thing, but overall it was a good mystery!

NetGalley/ June 16th, 2020 by Minotaur Books

I have not ready any other books by Sandie Jones before, so I didn't know what to expect with The Half Sister, but based on reviews I had seen, I thought I was going to enjoy the book, but sadly I did not. I found the beginning to be very slow and kept waiting for the book to pick up. Eventually it did, but I felt when it did start to move quicker, there were too many things being thrown at the reader to throw you off of thinking you had things figured out. The ending did not shock me at all, I think I was waiting for that big oh moment of hoping my guess all along would be proven wrong, but sadly it wasn't.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Really liked this one! I enjoyed the authors other two novels so I was very happy to receive an ARC of her latest novel and I found this to be a very riveting family drama with a very twisty last 1/4, especially the epilogue which I liked a lot

Thank you to Netgalley and Minotaur Books and St. Martin’s Press for sending me an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review

This is the story of sisters Lauren and Kate, who still have Sunday family dinners with their mother and their families. One Sunday, there's a knock at the door and a young woman, Jess, is standing there asking to see Harry (their father who has been dead for almost a year)...she is his daughter.

As one can imagine, this throws the whole extended family into turmoil. Truths and lies and omitted facts are tossed about throughout the entire book. There are plenty of twists to keep the reader engaged. I found the ending pretty satisfying, although I don't know why they continued to keep Jess in any kind regard.

I struggle with how much trust Lauren puts in an absolute stranger, including asking Jess to babysit Lauren's 3 young children. I also have a teensy problem with the DNA test showing that they share a father. At best, it would list them as close family or cousins and maybe you could guess half-sister.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

A compelling read! Family ties are tested when a stranger -- a woman named Jess claims to be a family's late father's daughter. What takes place is the eventual unraveling of family secrets that have laid dormant for 20-plus years.

A suspenseful, and engrossing novel that will keep you guessing until the end.

Four solid stars -- I really like it. Keep Sandie Jones on your radar.

Thank you NetGalley and Minotaur Books for the opportunity to read an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review.

I couldn’t resist starting (and ultimately finishing)
Sandie Jones’ upcoming book #TheHalfSister (out June 16) Spoiler Alert: I loved it and pretty much inhaled it. In true Jones fashion, there’s family drama, murder, secrets and lies that will have to turning pages QUICKLY. I have been a huge fan of Sandie’s writing since her debut #TheOtherWoman and she continues to impress me with her writing. I know this one isn’t out yet but I’m already looking forward to what she comes out with next!

This is, more than anything else, a story of family. It deals with the relationship between two sisters that has slowly deteriorated through the years and when their late father’s illegitimate daughter shows up, everything finally comes to a head.

I found myself waffling on this book. For most of the story I was okay with the basics. I liked the plot and the writing well enough. My problems were with the characters. I liked the younger sister, Kate, and thought she was feisty and engaging. However, I really disliked the older sister, Lauren. For much of the story she was so depressing to read about. Since the book was told through alternating viewpoints, it was very easy to just put the book down or be tempted to skim or skip when I got to her chapters. My strong dislike of this character made it hard to get through the book. I also found some of the secondary characters, such as their mother, Rose, and Lauren’s husband, Simon, to be rather one-dimensional.

There was a mystery driving the story and it was interesting, but not terribly suspenseful. This was a family drama, not a psychological thriller.

My copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to the the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review it.

I loved The Other Woman by this author, and I was so excited for this book. It fell short of my expectations sadly. The characters were very unlikeable and there was no crazy plot twists. It felt like there were fake reveals that went back and forth and it just confusing. I guessed the ending about halfway through. I really wanted to love this but was disappointed.

I really loved this book and finished it in 24 hours. Real page turner, good mystery with lots of twists and dark family secrets. Did not expect that ending! My only issues were I found the relationship between the sisters very childish and whiny and would have liked to seen a chapter devoted to Harry's perspective. But I thank you for the opportunity to review the book

I'm still processing how to feel about this story. I finished it quickly, which is good, but it felt at times that there was quite a lot going on, to the point that at times I had to scrunch up my brow and say "what?" That could just be me being easily confused so one shouldn't let themselves be deterred from reading this. Overall I enjoyed the story and would recommend it to others.

Thank you for the advanced copy. I'm especially grateful in these difficult times that I constantly have access to amazing books and authors.

I love books that send you on a roller coaster and this one doesn’t disappoint. I originally heard of Sandie Jones through a friend, and decided to try out My First Mistake and immediately knew I was a fan of hers. When I saw that The Half Sister was available to read, I jumped all over it. Imagine a random woman shows up on your door step looking for her father, who happens to be your father, who just passed away! & she DNA results to prove it! I stayed up last night reading it and could not stop reading it. If you like a good twisty turny book, this one is for you!