The Missing Sister

Waste of time.

Shayna goes to Paris after her sister is found dead. She reads a message in their secret twin language that she is really alive, so decides to retrace the steps of her sisters last days to try and find her.

The story was underdeveloped and mystery was short lived. Ending predictable and it was slow to get there. There is little to no build up for the suspense; I was continuously bored and just wanted to just flip to the last few pages because everything in between was so pointless. The whole thing was just a poor quality mystery/suspense novel.
The prose was absolutely ridiculous.

The main character, Shayna, is a pre-med student who is described as very intelligent in the beginning. Her character doesn’t seem to maintain this intellectual trait during the mystery though.

Total disappointment. I kept reading hoping there might be a major surprise and revelation in the end but there wasn’t.

This book had an excellent concept, but I don’t think it was fully realized. The pacing was certainly off. Mystery and suspense, I believe, is one of the harder genres to write because the pacing needs to be tight, and there needs to be plenty of blind alleys and red herrings so that the heart of the mystery is not apparent too quickly… and the ending should be surprising even though it should appear obvious after the face. I feel like this book failed on all counts. The writing was also overblown in places, with an excess of adjectives and adverbs that didn’t really add much to descriptions. The author, however, did give a good sense of being in Paris, which I enjoyed more than the story. Paris itself seemed to become a character. By the way, there is profanity in this book, which isnt mentioned in the books description. I am not a fan of swearing in books, so I thought Id let other potential readers know.

I read the first twelve chapters, then skipped to the last five. That was enough. In those few chapters, there were a dozen or so instances of profanity. I’ve used all the words used in this book myself, so I’m not against a little swearing. There’s plenty of books that I read where it fits perfectly. But it was just jarring in this book, and added nothing. I didn’t care for the characters. I didn’t care for the plot. I only picked this book as a First Reads because I felt I had to pick something. Not one choice actually appealed to me this month.

Shayna Darby has a twin sister, but one with whom she’s out of touch. When Angela turns up missing, Shayna goes to Paris to identify what is possibly her body and to find out the truth of what happened to her. Immediately, in Angela’s effects in her apartment, Shayna finds a coded message–for her. And also meets Angela’s friend Sebastian, who is helpful but at the same time, creepy.

Now Shayna must navigate a foreign city, in the presence of this strange man to find out the truth of what happened to Angela.

The suspense is very real and a lot of the detail is pretty graphic. The mise en scene in Paris comes off as genuine; not surprising as the author did her degree at the Sorbonne.

For those who love gritty, somewhat nasty murder mysteries with weird or serial killers, and an exotic setting in one of the world’s most famous cities, this thriller-murder mystery will satisfy. Perfect for a long plane trip or a rainy weekend.

I loved it. I’m not a big reader of thriller or murder mysteries but I’m coming to enjoy the genre (Lisa Gardner in particular.) This novel really works for me.

But I’m sorry to say that the locale is about all I did love. I was tempted to choose the Science Fiction selection for my First Reads pick this month–but I’m not a fan of time travel, so I chose this mystery instead. It fell flat for me, however.

I felt that the first half of the book dragged. I didn’t like either of the twins. The sister who traveled to France to handle her twin’s apparent death seemed shallow. What was described of the missing twin (mostly through unsent emails on her computer) painted her as a disturbed individual. There wasn’t all that much suspense until the final section.

I did, though, read it to the end. Because it was a complete story (which is almost a rarity nowadays) and the ending was decent…I consider it an “OK” read.

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