{"id":3725,"date":"2020-07-21T06:14:07","date_gmt":"2020-07-21T13:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3725"},"modified":"2020-07-21T06:14:07","modified_gmt":"2020-07-21T13:14:07","slug":"karen-dionne-the-wicked-sister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/karen-dionne-the-wicked-sister\/","title":{"rendered":"Karen Dionne: The Wicked Sister"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is an excellent suspense novel, so excellent that I devoured it in a single day.\u00a0 It gives a reader plenty to think about \u2013 but that\u2019s after<\/em> you\u2019ve careened through it\u2019s pages.\u00a0 I absolutely could not stop reading.<\/p>\n

Set in Michigan\u2019s beautiful upper peninsula, the book alternates narratives between that of Rachel\u2019s, in the present, and that of Jenny\u2019s and Peter\u2019s in the past.\u00a0 It\u2019s not immediately clear how the two connect but when they do, you really can\u2019t look away.\u00a0\u00a0 Rachel is living in a mental hospital for killing her mother at age 11 and watching as her father then killed himself.\u00a0 She has no memory of these events.<\/p>\n

Jenny is living downstate with her husband when the disturbing death of their neighbor\u2019s toddler in their pool causes them to leave town and flee to the upper peninsula, where Peter\u2019s family has an incredible log cabin outside of Marquette on acres of land.\u00a0 The two have decided to pursue their research there as wildlife biologists, and give their young daughter, Diana, freedom to roam the woods.<\/p>\n

But it becomes clear that Diana isn\u2019t normal, and that she may or may not have been responsible for the death of their neighbor\u2019s son in their pool.\u00a0 She\u2019s certainly difficult, defiant and seems to have little emotion regarding others.\u00a0 Her diagnosis, to any mystery reader, is pretty obvious, but Dionne slowly and carefully builds her character, making her defining qualities \u2013 and her cruelty \u2013 all the more chilling.<\/p>\n

She also builds the character of Rachel, who of course is Diana\u2019s younger sister.\u00a0 She\u2019s the sweet angel to Diana\u2019s difficult malignancy, and her parents spend most of their time managing the two girls so they are never alone together.\u00a0 To that end, Jenny\u2019s sister Charlotte comes to live with them to help supervise Diana.<\/p>\n

This is a remarkably similar formula to William March\u2019s 1954 novel The Bad Seed<\/a>, <\/em>and it\u2019s no less a compelling topic in 2020 than it was in 1954.\u00a0 What\u2019s far more contemporary is Dionne\u2019s look at the effect that Diana has on their family and the fissures in their relationships, fissures that they are all but unaware of as they attempt to learn to live with someone who is profoundly disturbed.<\/p>\n

As the novel opens Rachel is in a mental hospital, but she checks herself out and heads back to her family\u2019s cabin, hoping to restore her memory.\u00a0 Her arrival back at the house ramps up the suspense of the novel, as her memories start to return in bits and pieces.<\/p>\n

Dionne is a fan of fairy tales and a bit of magical realism.\u00a0 Rachel is able to communicate with animals \u2013 it\u2019s up to you whether you believe she can or not, but if you have even been around someone who is so comfortable with animals that they do seem to be able to almost speak to one another, you might tilt toward belief.\u00a0 She\u2019s also a lover of the upper peninsula, in all it\u2019s brutal glory.\u00a0 Both of these elements make this novel more than a run of the mill suspense novel, as does her real genius with character.\u00a0 None of the characters in this book are forgettable, and each of them seem almost hyper real.\u00a0 This is not an easy book to forget.<\/p>\n

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This is an excellent suspense novel, so excellent that I devoured it in a single day.\u00a0 It gives a reader plenty to think about \u2013 but that\u2019s after you\u2019ve careened through it\u2019s pages.\u00a0 I absolutely could not stop reading. Set in Michigan\u2019s beautiful upper peninsula, the book alternates narratives between that of Rachel\u2019s, in the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[260,15,14,373,13,372],"class_list":["post-3725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-karen-dionne","tag-michigan","tag-psychological","tag-sisters","tag-suspensethriller","tag-upper-pennisula"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3726,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725\/revisions\/3726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}