TUESDAY EXCERPTS: “THE WINTER SISTER”

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, First Chapter/Intros, originally hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea and now hosted by I’d Rather Be at the Beach; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by The Purple Booker.

Today’s featured book is a NetGalley ARC:  The Winter Sister, by Megan Collins, a book that will be released on 2/5/19, tells of a young woman haunted by the past who returns home to care for her ailing mother and begins to dig deeper into her sister’s unsolved murder.

 

 

 

Intro:  When they found my sister’s body, the flyers we’d hung around town were still crisp against the telephone poles.  The search party still had land to scour; the batteries in their flashlights still held a charge.  Persephone had been missing for less than seventy-two hours when a jogger caught a glimpse of her red coat through the snow, but by then, my mother had already become a stranger to me.

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Teaser Tuesday:  I stood up, latching my eyes onto his, and I waited to see who would last the longest, who would be the one to see the other look away.  Even though the darkness of his irises, so close in color to his pupils, made my neck prickle, I knew that it had to be me. (56%).

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Synopsis:  Sixteen years ago, Sylvie’s sister Persephone never came home. Out too late with the boyfriend she was forbidden to see, Persephone was missing for three days before her body was found—and years later, her murder remains unsolved.

In the present day, Sylvie returns home to care for her estranged mother, Annie, as she undergoes treatment for cancer. Prone to unexplained “Dark Days” even before Persephone’s death, Annie’s once-close bond with Sylvie dissolved in the weeks after their loss, making for an uncomfortable reunion all these years later. Worse, Persephone’s former boyfriend, Ben, is now a nurse at the cancer center where Annie is being treated. Sylvie’s always believed Ben was responsible for the murder—but she carries her own guilt about that night, guilt that traps her in the past while the world goes on around her.

As she navigates the complicated relationship with her mother, Sylvie begins to uncover the secrets that fill their house—and what really happened the night Persephone died. As it turns out, the truth will set you free, once you can bear to look at it.

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What do you think?  Would you keep reading?

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