Silent Sisters

This is a book in the vein of Glass Castle- the author, Joanne Lee is the daughter of a neglectful, abusive mother. During her childhood, Joanne has to care for herself both physically and emotionally. The mother goes on to have other children with different men, whom Joanne also has to take care of.
But the worst is yet to be uncovered, the mother, Bernadette Quirk, has hidden an even darker secret from her daughter and the world.
It is amazing that Ms. Lee was able to later become a loving, nurturing mother and wife.

When I started reading this book I had to check I picked the right book it starts off very dark and doesn't stop either. What this family went through is certainly shocking. The strength that Joanne had from such a young age to deal with what she has she is one amazing lady.
It was so well written I finished within a day and it stay with me for years to come.

Thank you Joanne and family for sharing this story of your family with us all.
Thanks to NetGalley author and publisher for my arc copy for a honest review.

I received a DIGITAL Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Silent Sisters by Joanne Lee is a true story about the dysfunctional childhood she and her siblings endured. If you enjoyed Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, this book is for you. Great book for book clubs and discussion groups.

Silent sisters makes you think how important it is to show love, display love, and how important family is to all of us. I love how the book not only wanted me to keep turning pages but also feel for the characters!

From the very day she was born Joanne Lee’s life was a challenge. No child should be treated the way she was. Her mother was uncaring and cold towards her and was not nurturing and caring at all. Mum more often than not did not prepare meals of any type and did not like to do housework either. Their home was squalid and stinking. She merely sat on the sofa proclaiming ‘I can’t be arsed’ with housework. She had a string of boyfriends who sometimes took notice of Joanna and tried hard to improve her life, but she didn’t like or encourage them, such was her desire to have her mother for herself. What she really wanted most of all was her mother to be a mother to her. Her mother had another baby and Joanne became a mother to her baby sister and then to her baby brother. Her mother hardly ever got up to see her children to school and Joanne became carer for all three of them when boyfriends had had enough of Bernadette’s slovenly ways, her drinking and her unacceptable behaviour.
I thought Joanne was a saint in her adult years to help her mother out with some odious and illegal acts, to visit her and invite her to home cooked meals. Her mother didn’t deserve it but Joanne couldn’t help herself, she was loyal and wanted to do what was right and be a good daughter. When she became a mother herself, she always made sure that her children were loved, cared for and taught good manners. She knew that she didn’t want her offspring to have the sort of neglect and physical, mental and psychological cruelty that she had lived through, but to have sweet memories to cherish and look back on.
Then one day she made a macabre discovery. You will have read about it in the ‘blurb’. That is when Joanne decides that she could not live a lie and continue to be loyal to her mother any more. She had always suffered from disturbing, violent and scary nightmares and just had to unburden herself for her own wellbeing. She told her caring and supportive neighbour what she had discovered and thereafter broke her silence. She was not able to keep her mother’s secrets any longer. It was tormenting her and what’s more she knew it was wrong. The police arrived and later Joanne found out that her mother had put all of the blame on her. She was accused of multiple murders.
I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment of this harrowing true story retold by Joanne, but suffice it to say that her mother was evil, conniving and most probably suffering from a severe mental illness. But that does not excuse her manipulation and criminality. I found this story dark, disturbing and totally shocking and shaming. I cannot imagine the lifelong damage suffered by her family members. So much so that eventually Joanne felt it was her duty to put the rumourmongers and storytellers right by going public and eventually writing this memoir. The contents of her heart-breaking story will leave you hollow and dumbstruck. You cannot imagine the degradation and horror that Joanne was born into. Days after reading her story I feel totally flat, stunned and aghast. But it did however make for compelling, if astounding and alarming reading.
In this debut Joanne tackles the taboos in life, cruelty, mental health issues, alcoholism, abuse and criminal actions. She writes with honesty and with a keen eye on truthfulness and transparency. I received a complimentary copy of this novel from publisher Mirror Books through my membership of NetGalley. Thank you for my copy. These are my own honest and well considered opinions. This is my 3.5* review.

What a heartbreaking read. All my sympathy goes to the author and not the mother. Extremely well written and honest. I Liked how the author explained in detail what her life was like growing up with her disfunctional, uncaring,selfish and evil Mum. It was shocking what her mother did and how she treated all her children.
I'm actually suprised the author survived it all and has remained so level headed and strong. I hope the future is so much brighter for Joanne and her family.

What a sordid ghastly story. Joanne Lee grew up with a apathetic mother who lived in squalor and not only neglected her, but relied on her to care for her two younger siblings. The family had a propensity to have teenage mothers through three generations. Lee stumbles across a horrific truth: her mother hoarded a baby's body. Lee holds the truth in for a few years, but after she divulges it, the authorities find three more badly decomposed bodies in her mother's home. I felt like I needed a stiff drink throughout most of the book. The real heroine of this story is Joanne, who made some bad choices in her life, but given the lack of guidance she wasn't given in her childhood, I think she is not only a survivor, but also a testament to the family she created.

Gripping true crime memoir. I've not read anything quite like it before.

What a story. Such a sad childhood, so many things happened, you just can't imagine. It kept me reading on and on. It was action packed; it tumbled along at a heck of a pace. A really quick easy read. You just won't guess the happenings, and there are so many.

Not just about this case-the book starts back at her childhood, family life, an early family holiday to Cornwall. Memories. And terrible dysfunction and conditions.

If this was a fiction book you'd be saying, wow, that was so good, a real roller coaster of events. But this was someone's real life. Such a powerful and tragic tale. And it all happened not that far from where I live. Wow, what an amazing book.

This book started off with a bang and just kept on going. While this is a true crime story it is very interesting
and written more like a memoir which is more to my liking. This book is all about the life of Joanne and how she broke open the shell and exposed the secrets of her mother's terrible crimes. Joanne's mother was not like other mothers. Right from the start of the book Joanne is left on her own to do most things feed herself, and do her own laundry at a very young age. Her mother was acting more like the child in their relationship and it made things very difficult growing up, she even had to take care of her younger siblings. I thought that this book was going to be mostly about the crime that took place however that wasn't even mentioned until the end part of the book. Most of the story was about how Joanne's mother was neglectful and left all the responsibility to her eldest daughter. Now these kinds of books I usually enjoy, and I did super enjoy this book I just had a very different mind set on what this book was going to be about when I started it based on the cover descriptions that I read. When by cleaning up a filthy house Joanne finds a box with the remains of not just one new born but four, she decides enough is enough and this leads her to take action. I found Joanne's character
very well written she was very responsible and strong to have gone through the terrible things that she went through, and even though her mother did a lot of bad things I still really felt for her because she must have been sick or something to let those terrible things happen. I also enjoyed the way that this book was written it wasn't to dark but it didn't sugar coat anything that happened. She wrote it more in a factual way and I really enjoyed this. While there were parts that I didn't like and parts that I didn't see coming based on the description I found the story to be rather interesting and I'm glad that I got the chance to check it out.