Sisters
SistersDaisy Johnson
Buy on Amazon

Sisters (2020)

Daisy Johnson

Others: Mixed

A New York Times Notable Book (2020) from a Booker Prize finalist and international literary star: a blazing portrait of one darkly riveting sibling relationship, from the inside out.. Now she returns with Sisters, a haunting story about two sisters caught in a powerful emotional web and wrestling to understand where one ends and the other begins. Born just ten months apart, July and September are thick as thieves, never needing anyone but each other. Now, following a case of school bullying, the teens have moved away with their single mother to a long-abandoned family home near the shore. In their new, isolated life, July finds that the deep bond she has always shared with September is shifting in ways she cannot entirely understand. A creeping sense of dread and unease descends inside the house. Meanwhile, outside, the sisters push boundaries of behavior—until a series of shocking encounters tests the limits of their shared experience, and forces shocking revelations about the girls’ past and future. Sisters is a one-two punch of wild fury and heartache—a taut, powerful, and deeply moving account of sibling love and what happens when two sisters must face each other’s darkest impulses.

ISBN:
9780593188958
Length:
192 pages

Genres: horror, mystery, thriller, literary fiction

Lists: …

Similar books

1 of 6
  • What I'd Rather Not Think About

    Jente Posthuma

    2020 · 228 pages · 1 review

    Others: Neutral

    What if one half of a pair of twins no longer wants to live? What if the other can’t live without them? This question lies at the heart of Jente Posthuma’s deceptively simple What I’d Rather Not Think About. The narrator is a twin whose brother has recently taken his own life. She looks back on their childhood, and tells of their adult lives: how her brother tried to find happiness, but lost himself in various men and the Bhagwan movement, though never completely. In brief, precise vignettes, full of gentle melancholy and surprising humour, Posthuma tells the story of a depressive brother, viewed from the perspective of the sister who both loves and resents her twin, struggles to understand him, and misses him terribly.

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    On the same reading list
    90%
    Also literary fiction
    9%
    Similar descriptions
    1%
    Personalize your recommendations
  • Boy Parts

    Eliza Clark

    2020 · 304 pages · 2 reviews

    Others: Mostly positive

    Exiled from the art world and on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle. But her talent has not gone unnoticed, and Irina is invited to display her work at a fashionable London gallery. It is a chance to revive her career and escape from the rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema she’s fallen into. Yet the news instead triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centered around Irina’s consuming relationship with her best friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention...

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    On the same reading list
    54%
    Also horror and literary fiction
    38%
    A creator reacted alike
    8%
    Personalize your recommendations
  • Death in Her Hands

    Ottessa Moshfegh

    2020 · 272 pages · 4 reviews

    Others: Mixed

    A novel of haunting metaphysical suspense about an elderly widow whose life is upturned when she finds a cryptic note on a walk in the woods that ultimately makes her question everything about her new home. While on her normal daily walk with her dog in the forest woods, our protagonist comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground with a frame of stones. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body". Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to area, having moved her from her longtime home after the death of her husband, and she knows very few people. And she's a little shaky even on best days. Her brooding about this note quickly grows into a full-blown obsession, and she begins to devote herself to exploring the possibilities of her conjectures about who this woman was and how she met her fate. Her suppositions begin to find echoes in the real world, and with mounting excitement and dread, the fog of mystery starts to form into a concrete and menacing shape. But as we follow her in her investigation, strange dissonances start to accrue, and our faith in her grip on reality weakens, until finally, just as she seems be facing some of the darkness in her own past with her late husband, we are forced to face the prospect that there is either a more innocent explanation for all this or a much more sinister one - one that strikes closer to home. A triumphant blend of horror, suspense, and pitch-black comedy, 'Death in Her Hands' asks us to consider how the stories we tell ourselves both guide us closer to the truth and keep us at bay from it. Once again, we are in the hands of a narrator whose unreliability is well earned, only this time the stakes have never been higher.

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    On the same reading list
    60%
    Also literary fiction and mystery
    36%
    Similar descriptions
    4%
    Personalize your recommendations
  • Temporary

    Hilary Leichter

    2020 · 200 pages · 2 reviews

    Others: Leaning positive

    A young woman's workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it's shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, “there is nothing more personal than doing your job.”

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    On the same reading list
    81%
    Also literary fiction
    10%
    A creator reacted alike
    9%
    Personalize your recommendations
  • Pew

    Catherine Lacey

    2020 · 224 pages · 2 reviews

    Others: Overwhelmingly positive

    "In a small unnamed town in the American South, a church congregation arrives to a service and finds a figure asleep on a pew. The person is genderless, racially ambiguous, and refuses to speak. One family takes the strange visitor in and nicknames them Pew. As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. Pew listens and observes while experiencing brief flashes of past lives or clues about their origins. As days pass, the void around Pew's presence begins to unnerve the community, whose generosity erodes into menace and suspicion. Yet by the time Pew's story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of their true nature - as a devil or an angel or something else entirely - is dwarfed by even larger truths."--Publisher description.

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    On the same reading list
    87%
    Also literary fiction
    12%
    Similar descriptions
    1%
    Personalize your recommendations
  • The Majesties

    Tiffany Tsao

    2020 · 264 pages · 4 reviews

    Others: Positive

    "Gwendolyn and Estella have always been as close as sisters can be. Growing up in a wealthy, eminent, and sometimes deceitful family, they've relied on each other for support and confidence. But now Gwendolyn is lying in a coma, the sole survivor of Estella's poisoning of their whole clan. As Gwendolyn struggles to regain consciousness, she desperately retraces her memories, trying to uncover the moment that led to this shocking and brutal act. Was it their aunt's mysterious death at sea? Estella's unhappy marriage to a dangerously brutish man? Or were the shifting loyalties and unspoken resentments at the heart of their opulent world too much to bear? Can Gwendolyn, at last, confront the carefully buried mysteries in their family's past and the truth about who she and her sister really are?"--Publisher description.

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    On the same reading list
    66%
    Also literary fiction and thriller
    27%
    Similar descriptions
    7%
    Personalize your recommendations

Reviews1