The Shadow Sister

Yippee this one was on my Christmas wish list, so I was delighted to open the wrapping paper on Christmas Day and spot the familiar cover. As you can tell… I started reading it immediately!!

If you’re new to my blog and not familiar with Riley’s Seven Sisters series, in a nutshell, there are six sisters (ooooh the mystery of the seventh) adopted by Pa Salt, which following his death each receive coordinates, a key phrase and a letter full of clues which  allow them to discover their biological heritage. In The Seven Sisters, Maia is led to Brazil and in The Storm Sister, Ally is led to Norway. In each book the story floats between the viewpoint of the sister and deep into the past through the eye’s of a key ancestor. In The Shadow Sister, we follow the tale of Star and her great grandmother Flora.

A perfectly suited title for a book that tells the story of two girls who have always been deemed as in the shadow of their sisters – Star, in CeCe’s shadow and Flora, in Aurelia’s shadow.

The most calming of the series so far, I particularly enjoyed reading about Star taking a job in the old fashioned book store with the quirky current owner – Orlando. Star was led to the store following a clue from her father which told her to go to the store and ask about ‘Flora MacNichol’.

Flora; her great grandmother, is an unusual character herself, in that she’s very much the ‘tom boy’ of her family but nevertheless she ends up falling madly in love with Archie and left heartbroken when the right thing to do is to break it off. She deals with this heartbreak in the Keppel household with her beloved kitten, Panther.

The link between Orlando’s family and Flora is a whirlwind drama with multiple plot turns… I have to admit I was very pleased with the ending especially given the fondness Star had for young Rory (Orlando’s nephew). I’m a huge fan of Riley, the way she entwines fiction with history is incredible… for example Alice Keppel was in fact a known mistress of King Edward VII and the friendship between Beatrix Potter and Flora was extremely sweet and fitting.

At nearly 700 pages long, Lucinda has created the biggest beast yet in this series!! However the hundreds of pages seemed to vanish before my eyes, as when I finished the last page, I was sad to let the story go.

Until next time, Chloé x