vigilantism | Seattle Book Mama

“We all have a little monster in us.”

Missing Sister is the newest thriller by one of my favorite authors, Joshilyn Jackson. My thanks go to William Morrow and NetGalley for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

Penny Albright is a rookie cop, a vocation she chose after her twin sister, Nix, died of an overdose. Nix was raped by a group of three men that she knew; Penny wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, but soon after it happened, Nix’s personality changed. She moved to the city, isolated herself. Before the rape, Nix had never used street drugs. Penny is too late to save Nix, but she hopes to be able to spare others the same horrific fate.

Then she and her trainer, who’s also her partner, are called to a murder scene. The victim turns out to be one of the three men that raped Nix, and Penny forces herself to show no reaction, to keep her cop face on, but inside, she is exultant. Then, while canvassing the area, Penny inadvertently comes upon the killer, holding the murder weapon and covered in blood. She and the woman lock eyes, and then, rather than arresting her, Penny lets her go. After that, she becomes obsessed with learning the woman’s story; she is certain that the killer had a similar experience to Nix’s, or that the killer had a sister that did. She vows to hunt the killer down in order to find out what happened.

The first half of the book is frustrating. The story is told in the first person, and after hearing Penny’s determined plan to learn the killer’s story over and over again, on a never-ending, somewhat circular loop, I want to smack her upside the head and tell her to get on with it. Leave that dangerous woman alone! She can’t bring your sister back, and you can’t either, I want to tell her. A part of me felt let down, because Jackson doesn’t usually have a weak first half, or any weak part at all in her novels. But just as I’m beginning to think, what a shame, everything changes, and the story becomes a true, grab-you-by-the-hair thriller. The ending is a complete surprise, and what’s more, it makes sense. The second half more than makes up for the first half.

I was lucky enough to have both the digital and audio review copies, and Jackson reads her own story, which makes it even better.

This story smacks of a possible series, and if that’s the plan, it explains why readers have Penny’s motivation beaten into us. That motivation may be the basis for who knows how many books to come; many, I hope! For those that are able to wade through the first half to find the reward in the second, this book is highly recommended.

Once in a while the odd thing happens,

Once in a while the dream comes true,

And the whole pattern of life is altered,

Once in a while the moon turns blue.

The tiny Georgia hamlet of Wesleyan is preparing to bury one of its own, and Mother Nature is preparing to cover the entire town in ice. But nobody—well, almost nobody—knows that a source of local tension is about to go nuclear, as someone is planning to topple and destroy the statue of a Confederate general in the park inside the boundaries of Old Man Griffin’s land. “The fight was just getting going good, and now somebody’s declawed the cat.”

This riveting, curiously charming and sometimes hilarious novel is the second by Pamela Terry, whose outstanding debut novel was The Sweet Taste of Muscadines. This one may be even better. My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

With the death of Harry Cline, we find ourselves at his funeral, a massively attended affair. But his wife, Marietta, develops a disabling, blinding migraine, and although they have been on the outs for years, Butter, her (former) best friend, comes to the rescue. By the time they’ve snuck out the side door of the church, we already know at least a little about both women, and now we want to know everything.

With just two novels published, Terry has already proven herself to be among the best authors when it comes to character development. Soon we’ll meet others—Marietta’s obnoxious brother, Macon and his beleaguered wife Glinda, who will have a large part in this story and is one of my favorite characters, as well as a host of others, who have smaller roles but are each so unmistakably established that it’s no work at all to keep track of them. But perhaps her finest achievement here is in creating a masterpiece that is ultimately a feel good book, despite the use of a red hot real world controversy within its pages.

I generally read several books at a time, and this one is the one that I saved for bedtime, because I wanted to be able to read it uninterrupted, and it is the one I wanted in my head when dreams came. It didn’t let me down.

This inspirational work of Southern fiction stands shoulder to shoulder with the finest classics, To Kill a Mockingbird and Fried Green Tomatoes. I wholeheartedly recommend it to you.