Shocking, Disturbing, Ice Cold Noir

The Other Sister has a classic noir cast: a cop (an ex-pat former FBI agent who happens to be living in Sweden under Witness Protection), and two sisters, one a tech genius who was badly disfigured in a mysterious accident, and the other a narcissistic, beautiful woman who is the face of the sisters' successful, unique online dating company. The former FBI agent is John Adderley, and The Other Sister is the second book in a series. When Stella, the beautiful sister, is found murdered, her sister Alicia is left confused and vengeful. Alicia's alcohol consumption and mental issues seriously cloud her judgment, and she makes some deadly choices. John has a strong survival instinct, and as he works the case, he makes some poor choices of his own--and those choices will rob him of a deep friendship, and leave him even more burdened with crushing guilt. Alicia and John meet infrequently in the story, but their storylines circle one another, finally spiraling together into a dramatic, shocking end.

No character in The Other Sister is likable. They're complicated, sometimes painfully pragmatic or impulsive, and either wracked with guilt, or heartless in their cruelty. There's plenty of betrayal, too, that's hard to sympathize with as a reader. That might sound like a collection of Very Bad Things, but this is noir, and that's the way noir stories work. The contemporary term might be "cringeworthy." You don't want to look, but you can't look away.

The sisters' story unravels slowly through the book. It's clear from the beginning that their mutual past contains a compelling mystery, but as Stella dies fairly early on, we are left to discover it through Alicia's pain and mental illness. Her search for redemption and forgiveness is heartbreaking, even though her actions and treatment of the people closest to her are unforgivably cruel. One wonders why they even stick around. By the end, we learn the truth of everyone's motivations--and none of it is pretty. Adderley's story feels almost secondary at times, due to the powerful complexity of the sisters' story. This book works as a standalone, but I rather wish I'd read the first in series to know his backstory better.

While the narrator was fine with characterization of most of the men, his women were less convincing.
Expect a lot of brutality and bold action. Fans of dark thrillers will find The Other Sister quite satisfying.

I try really hard to find something good about books I don't enjoy but apart from the fact that I finished (because I'm stubborn) and it didn't give me a headache I gave it two stars.

This was not the book for me. I don't usually liken one thriller writer to another but this story is as far fetched as one of John Marrs wildly convoluted sagas.

I hadn't read The Bucket List but I'd heard good things about it and thought if I couldn't understand this second in the Agent Adderley series I'd read it. I certainly won't bother now.

The basic storyline is 2 sisters - the pretty one and the disfigured one run a dating website. The pretty one likes dangerous sex and one night is found dead at a site where she was meeting a date. The not pretty sister thinks she knows who did it and why and is determined not to fall victim to the same perpetrator.

Thrown into this mix is the investigator John Adderley who has come from the FBI on a witness protection programme (of which obviously none of his Swedish colleagues are aware). For reasons I can't go into he begins to manipulate evidence, witnesses and the whole course of the investigation to save his new identity.

The next piece of information you need to know is that I listened to the audio of this narrated by Dion Graham (who has apparently won awards for his work). It was awful. As if the storyline was utterly insane enough Mr Graham decided to make all the women sound like a breathy Marilyn Monroe and his male characters veered wildly from Swedish to American never mind who they were. There is even a part where we meet a drug cartel leader who was supposedly Nigerian but sounded like Pacino's Tony Montana. How we didn't hear the words "Say hello to my leetle friend" is still baffling me.

So an incomprehensible story (which gets more and more ridiculous) along with an awful narration and I was delighted when Mr Graham uttered the words The End.

This is the second book in the John Adderley series. The series follows former FBI agent, John Adderley, as he navigates Sweden under a new identity from witness protection where he works as a detective. In the second book, he is assigned to investigate the murder of a beautiful dating site CEO. There are multiple storylines, different POVs, and some nail biting twists. The audiobook is well narrated and I really enjoyed listening to the Nordic Noir thriller.

Thank you @netgalley and @recordedbooks for allowing me to listen to this audiobook ahead of publication in exchange for my honest review.

This is a very suspenseful novel, and I was surprised as to how invested I was in the story. The characters are not only unlikable and flawed, but borderline psychopathic, which is why I was shocked as to how much I cared that they got away with it. Most procedurals involve the reader rooting for the police to find out what happened and punishing the perpetrator, but this is different. John Adderley, a cop with a shady past, does something horrible and spends the rest of the novel trying to cover it up. The more he tries to fix things, the more he gets entangled in a plot of his own making. The main case, the murder of a successful woman, is hard to figure out. I saw one of the twists coming, but I still wanted to know how it would evolve. Alicia, the titular other sister, is an alcoholic and keeps complicating things for herself and for John. Dion Graham gives a solid audiobook performance, even if his characters could have been a little more distinctive. This is the second book in a series, but it can be read as a standalone. I haven’t read the first one, and I still understood what was going on. Entertaining and well-plotted.
I chose to listen to this audiobook and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, #NetGalley/#RB Media, Recorded Books!

This was just . . . confusing? I didn't end up finishing it, because I couldn't keep track of what was happening. Maybe it was a translation issue.