Maddy and Emily are half sisters. Emily was a troubled teenager who came to live with her absent father upon her mother's death. Maddy's world turned upside down when she suddenly was no longer an only child. Twenty years later, Emily returns to settle her father's estate and Maddy is not at all happy to see her estranged sister. Emily seems to have gotten her life together and is very successful, but those old wounds and secrets from their teenage years have not been buried yet.

I regret waiting so long to read this one. The family drama, unreliable narrator, and amoral characters all come together in the best way. I am generally not a huge fan of unreliable narrator stories, but this one didn't bother me. Definitely recommend this if you're looking for a twisty family drama.

Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for the ARC of Half Sisters.

An interesting take on the, in my opinion, over used sister/half sister trope.
This book kept a good pace and kept me captive until the end.

The characters in this book were very unlikeable. The writing was good. The story was told from multiple POVs.
An average read

I have mixed feelings about this book. On one hand I really enjoyed it, but on the other hand, it left me wanting more. I loved that up until the end you didn't know who was ''good'' and who was ''bad''. There were twists I didn't expect, but I just wish they were executed a little better. This was like reading a train wreck, I love these kind of books.

Yall this one was wild. I mean wtf wild. And honestly not so much in a good way.

I went into this thinking OK. Mystery. Something isn't right. It seemed like everyone was gaslighting this poor girl, and in a way they were. It was a massively huge revenge plot due to betrayal. Which again, mystery so I get it. The only rub was everyone sucks. I mean bad. They're all such garbage humans I couldn't pick one person I could root for or hope came out of this ok. While it's understandable I suppose, it just left me feeling like I spent a lot of time with awful people. Which I didn't love. It was also hard to keep up with the plot as It kept moving around so much. Dual POVs are wonderful, just not when I have to keep scrolling backwards to see who's speaking. The ending was also such a huge plot hole that was just left open. Nothing. No answers. No fixing it. All in all, this wasn't awful, it just wasn't the best.

I received an advanced copy for free and am leaving this review voluntarily. Thank you to NetGalley, Lake Union, and Virginia Franken. ❤️

This was a twisty suspenseful novel. Maddy’s married to her best friend’s brother Joseph. Mandy would like to sell her parent’s house but she needs to find her half sister Emily first. She finally gets the chance to talk to her after Joseph runs into her in New York. When Emily arrives back in town, the past is brought back. What happened with Emily back then wasn’t good. Things start to unravel around Maddy.

Unfortunately, Half Sisters was not for me. I’ve read some great reviews on Goodreads so please take the following with a pinch of salt and as my own personal view only.

I really disliked the characters. I mean, this is a book full of lies and deception so maybe you aren’t supposed to like them at all, but I couldn’t appreciate them as literary figures either. I also found the characters to be quite confusing. Who we are made to believe they are at the start of the book is not who they are at all. And character development, I get it, it’s just that it didn’t feel real. The jump from one personality to another was too vast. To be honest, I felt something similar with the entire book. It was a little too fragmented. I feel it could have done with a stronger bridge from how the story starts to how it ends.

I’ll leave this review here as I don’t want to be excessively negative. It’s always a good bet to check out other reviews if you were initially intrigued by Half Sisters.

What I initially thought was baseless gaslighting turned out to be a mountainous plot of revenge and betrayal.

Half-Sisters made me pause regularly to parse through who I really believed was at fault for the events that rocked Maddy and Emily’s family. I am not sure I ever really came to a definitive answer.

Overall, Half-Sisters was a 2/5 for me pros: the unreliable narrators and attempt to create mystery.
cons: (1) inability to relate to any of the characters because the book just doles out lie after lie and never dives deeply into each one and (2) the ending. Unresolved/open endings are not my favorite, but I can understand their usage in a mystery. Here, however, the climax and ending were so close together that I was unable to truly appreciate (or understand) what was happening. The relationships to each other (even the one between Emily and Joseph) just felt too weak to hold up this big of a conspiracy.

I was given a NetGalley widget for this one a year ago and I just got around to reading it and dangit it was so good. I am so thankful for the opportunity to have consumed this wildly relevant fictional tale, which felt not at all fictional, more like historical fiction, due to the times. The cover initially was what drew me in, but I'm so thankful to have stuck with it because the outcome was magical.

While I didn't hate this book- it was not my favorite. I just don't think that I like books without many likeable characters. I need a person or a few people to root for. I did like that it didn't feel predictable but the ending felt a bit lacking.

I love a book that has me questioning myself the whole time and this one did exactly that. It was wonderful.

Half Sisters by Virginia Franken is a twisty family drama focusing on the themes of family secrets and family dynamics. This one kept me guessing, even with some uneven elements.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this one with me. All thoughts are my own.

As a half-sister myself, I was drawn to this book because of the title, but unfortunately it wasn't quite what I was hoping for. The story focuses on family drama, and the challenges related to blended families (something I know a lot about..). The characters are well defined but complicated and a bit hard to connect with (perhaps by design?). It is fairly well paced and has a decent plotline, but is a bit like watching chaos from a distance and wondering what will transpire next. The book ends without resolving some major plot elements, and there were some strange and complicated ideas that felt unfinished. The narrative was interesting and fairly well written but was missing something for me. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for giving me the chance to read and review this book.

I really loved this book!! It had so many twists and turns. It kept me on the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen next!! This was my first book by this Author, and it won’t be the last!! Quick read!! Highly recommended!! You won’t be disappointed!!

Half Sisters had my head spinning after the first few chapters--it was definitely unpredictable! If you want some characters you can love to hate, you'll find them here. A disturbing and twisty family tale.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy.

I want to thank Netgalley and the author for gifting me the ebook. A good women's fiction drama. Love the cover.

Half Sisters by Virginia Franken gives a whole new meaning to family drama. As per the title, the main characters are Maddy and her half sister Emily, who moves into Maddy’s family home in her teens, when Maddy was a few years younger. Until then, the girls had not known of each other, which made the transition to a new family dynamic difficult, to say the least. But the family did its best until a terrible incident resulted in Emily being forced to leave, not to return until the death of their father, decades later. This is when everyone’s true colours are revealed. Virginia Franken has drawn complicated characters . It’s difficult to determine which of the sisters is the most detestable and dishonest. There are also great secondary characters who make this story even more challenging. The plot evolves in a most satisfying manner, giving the reader plenty of characters and incidents to love &/or hate. The story alternates between the sisters’ teen years and their reunion as adults many years later. Half Sisters is fast-moving and akin to watching a car wreck. It’s always difficult to determine which one is the bad seed. Highly recommended. Thank you to Lake Union Publishing, NetGalley and the author for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book. I have chosen to write this honest review voluntarily and it reflects my personal opinion.
There are several aspects to the story that I thought were unresolved by the end of the book, such as the repetition that Emily had matted hair and her bedroom smelt very unpleasant after she arrived at Ivan and Sophie's house (it was never explained why she she wasn't encouraged to self-care), and why Maddie believed Emily wasn't legally entitled to half of the value of the house when this was written in her father's will. The descriptions of Maddie losing items and conversations that may or may not have happened became confusing by the end of the book, particularly around the conversation on Bee's porch.
I read the book to the end but I didn't feel satisfied with the outcome, I thought the final reveal was rather tame after the author's attempts to build suspense. There are many other reviewers who have enjoyed this novel but the narrative style was not to my liking at all.

Maddy thought she had a perfect life, but right around the time her half sister, Emily, reappears in her life after many years gone, Maddy starts to get confused about different things - where she placed items, who she saw and when, and is even convinced that her husband, Joseph, is having a secret affair with Emily. To make it complicated, Emily and Joseph dated way back in high school. Maddy struggles to make sense of what’s going on - and a deep secret from many years ago begins to come to light…

Thank you to @netgalley for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review.

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Families are supposed to be loving and supportive—but that’s not always the case. Some are abusive and manipulative, built on lies and selfishness. And in Half Sisters by author Virginia Franken, the years of rivalry and abuse come flooding back when two sisters are reunited.

Full review published on NightsAndWeekends.com and aired on Shelf Discovery