TUESDAY EXCERPTS: “THE BETTER 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 feature is a recent download:  The Better Sister, by Alafair Burke. Keep your enemies close and your sister closer.

 

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Intro:  (Fourteen Years Earlier)

I betrayed my sister while standing on the main stairs of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a beaded Versace gown (borrowed) and five-inch stiletto heels (never worn again).

At the time, I never could have scored an invitation—or been able to afford a ticket—to the Met Gala in my own right.  I was the guest of my boss, Catherine Lancaster, the editor in chief of City Woman magazine.  She wasn’t even my boss.  She was my boss’s boss’s boss.  And somehow she personally invited me.

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Teaser:  Olivia had told us to expect an objection to the fact that Nicky and I were sitting in the courtroom.  I was expressly on the witness list, and Nicky could still potentially be called as well.  Even though Nunzio could obviously see us as he paced the courtroom, he said nothing to object. (59%).

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Synopsis:  Though Chloe was the younger of the two Taylor sisters, she always seemed to be the one in charge. She was the honor roll student with big dreams and an even bigger work ethic. Nicky—always restless and more than a little reckless—was the opposite of her ambitious little sister. She floated from job to job and man to man, and stayed close to home in Cleveland.

For a while, it seemed that both sisters had found happiness. Chloe earned a scholarship to an Ivy League school and moved to New York City, where she landed a coveted publishing job. Nicky married promising young attorney Adam Macintosh and gave birth to a baby boy they named Ethan. The Taylor sisters became virtual strangers.

Now, more than fifteen years later, their lives are drastically different—and Chloe is married to Adam. When he’s murdered by an intruder at the couple’s East Hampton beach house, Chloe reluctantly allows her teenage stepson’s biological mother—her estranged sister, Nicky—back into her life. But when the police begin to treat Ethan as a suspect in his father’s death, the two sisters are forced to unite . . . and to confront the truth behind family secrets they have tried to bury in the past.

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I have enjoyed several books by this author.  What do you think?

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