The Lost Sister by Megan Kelley Hall

Ever since the disappearance of her half-sister Cordelia, Maddie Crane has been wracked with guilt and plagued by nightmares of that fateful night that forced Cordelia to flee. Even when she transfers to a boarding school in Maine, far from her hometown in Hawthorne, Massachusetts, Maddie can’t escapt from the blame she’s pinned on herself. Although Maddie will take the guild any day over facing the demons she’s left at home, she knows she can’t hide forever, especially after receiving news of her mother’s cancer—and the tarot card for Death from an unknown sender. And so she returns to Hawthorne, to a home torn apart by her sister’s disappearance, to a town scarred by dangerous memories and filled with sinister secrets. Maddie realizes that it’s time to start cleaning up the whole mess, but what she doesn’t know is that this mess may have moved beyond her control and into the hands of someone—or something—far more cruel.

The Lost Sister is the sequel to Sisters of Misery we’ve all been looking for, but while it does address many of the questions its prequel left unanswered, the novel was not quite as spectacular as I thought it’d be. Let me make this clear, The Lost Sister is without a doubt a thrilling story filled with danger, the scandal of recently uncovered secrets, and the mystical wonder of witchcraft and extrasensory perception. But as enthralling as the story is, I often felt the characters were mere puppets of the plot instead of people within a story. Maddie and a select few other characters do experience some growth, but none of these characters ever felt quite real to me. In all actuality, the spirit sightings and other unexplainable events were more believable than the characters. This is because although Hall does a fantastic job of making this novel’s plot exciting and unpredictable, she didn’t dedicate the same care to developing her characters. I didn’t know them and could hardly relate to them most of the time. This doesn’t make the story bad; in fact, I found this story quite enjoyable. But I did find it a little odd that there were so many loose ends left untied by this novel’s finish even though the story just felt like it was over. The Lost Sister could’ve been greater had it been refined better, but it is still a good read and a page turner.

Fans of Hall’s debut Sisters of Misery will not want to miss its sequel The Lost Sister. Hall’s writing is sure to be enjoyed by fans of Swoon by Nina Malkin, Distant Waves by Suzanne Weyn, Blue is for Nightmares by Laurie Faria Stolarz, and Revealers by Amanda Marrone.

Rating: 4.25

Review copy from publisher Kensington