Customer Reviews

The Secret Sister

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The premise sounds promising: Christy McKenna, NYC fashion writer, gets a cryptic message from her estranged sister summoning her to Colorado.

What results is a haphazardly slapped together mess of a story involving models, photographers, native lands, stolen artifacts, and rogue archeologists. Yeah, rogue archeologists.

There is so much wrong with this book that it distracts from finding something right. The main characters are flat and awkward, so buying their immediate attraction is impossible. The villains have no logical reason for their villainy, except that they are rich and pretty. Like all of Lowell's contemporary novels, this one contains a mystery involving art, this time belonging to an ancient civilization.

While the researched details are interesting, no one else in the story is. The paralell storyline of our McKenna sisters and ancient sisters of the past is laughable. And I could drive a truck through the plot holes, back up, attach a horse trailer, and drive through them again.

And the secret sister herself? Atrocious. Just atrocious.

I'm sorry, but I could just not get into this book at all. It's so implausible, and I couldn't get over it. The main character ends up with the "hero" after he helps her escape from security guards after an attempted home "break-in". She does not know this man, but then lets him take her back to his house. An admitted murdered, he then proceeds to order her around and she follows blindly and cheerfully, falling in love with him despite the fact that he has technically kidnapped her. One of her reasons for following along? He wouldn't drive her back to her hotel (she could have walked, no? or called someone from her cell phone, which she uses to check her messages) I found the whole situation to be rather creepy, and the main character to be somewhat stupid. However, she did handle descriptions of the West and the Anasazi artifacts well.

I wanted to like this book, but it fell short of my expectations. The whole story seemed kind of flat and uninspired.

Although this book was originally written 12 years ago, I think the story holds up very well.

Christy McKenna is a fashion editor for Horizon magazine and has just returned from two weeks vacation. She finds amid the myriad of messages and notes accumulated on her desk, a message slip marked "Urgent" from her sister Jo-Jo. They have been estranged for twelve years. Jo-Jo is known as "Jo" and has been famous fashion model for a decade. The sisters were raised by their grandmother when their parents were killed when they were young. Christy is older by 1 year and was offered a scholarship to college at age 18 which she took and thus left her sister Jo with their grandma. Christy feels guilty for abandoning Jo even though Jo is very self-centered and was always getting Christy in trouble. Christy is ordered by her boss to go out west to see the new Peter Hutton collection in Colorado. Jo-Jo is Peter Hutton's main model. Christy calls her sister and tells her she is coming.

Christy is determined not to get ensnared in any of her sister's questionable activities this time but little does she know! While Christy is wandering about the small town she steps in a museum and see a man come in with boxes of artifacts and notices that Sheriff Danner does not like him and accuses him of stealing. Peter Hutton's assistant, Autry, invites her out to the ranch ahead of the show. Much to her surprise, her sister is not there and in fact Mr. Hutton states that she "took off". At a press gathering and barbeque, Christy sneaks into the house to search her sister's room determined to get back a favorite gold nugget necklace of her Grandma's and to get clues as to where Jo-Jo is. She has to hide when a burglar is caught and beaten by the guards. Then she almost gets caught and jumps off a deck to run and runs into the "thief" from the museum, Aaron Cain.

From here on the book has lots of action, danger and mystery. While there are some holes in the plot, it was still a fun and exciting read that holds up well especially since I didn't read it the first time it was published.

This is a reissue of one of Lowell's earlier novels. While it's a pretty good read, it is nowhere near her later excellent work. The characterizations are reasonably well done, but the plot stretches the reader's credulity quite a bit.

**SPOILER AHEAD**

The ending is disappointing: You never get to meet the "Secret Sister" and form your own opinion of her, because she's been dead all the while. This would have been a much better book if it had been told from both sisters' points of view, rather than just one.

To sum up, not bad, but not great, either.

I've read other Elizabeth Lowell novels some are pretty good but this was is a real dud! This novel twists and turns but not in a good way. I rarely give up on a book so I really had to push myself to finish this one. I don't recommend this book.

Have you ever read a book about which you are indifferent? This book falls under that category. I loved "Moving Target", and lent it to my best friend to read, who also enjoyed it. So when she picked up "The Secret Sister", she handed it to me to read, saying that she really enjoyed it.

The storyline was very unique and intriguing. If there's anything I love about Elizabeth Lowell's books, it's that I learn something. In "Moving Target", it's all about medieval manuscripts, and in "The Secret Sister", the reader learns about the Anasazi and their culture. We're taken on a journey through Western America as Christy searches for her lost sister. Kokopelli, potsherds, kivas, cliff dwellings...The author describes them fluidly and vividly.

But (you knew there was a "but" coming...) she describes them a bit too much. This seems to come up quite a bit in my posts; the over verbosity of authors. Readers aren't dumb. We get it. You don't need to go on and on about a tree, or in this case, a potsherd. Get to the point already. She could have saved a bit of paper if she was short and sweet. One love scene went on for at least 4 pages. Yes, Christy's in the throes of ecstasy. Move on.

Ms Lowell also used the same phrases and ideas more than once. In the very first chapter, Christy decides to break up with her boring boyfriend Nick. So I established in my head that she was broken up. But then, a few chapters later, Christy decides again to break up with Nick, and the author uses almost exactly the same wording she had already used. There were also a few back-and-forths between Christy and Cain that were repeated, and I remember thinking to myself, didn't we already go through this?

The search for Christy's sister Jo-Jo kept me excited for the story despite the issues I mention above. The good balances with the bad, which is why I'm indifferent. It's an ok book. Probably not one I'll read again (like "Moving Target", which I've read more than once), but it won't turn me away from Elizabeth Lowell, either. Maybe her next one will be more impressive.

While the plot itself holds some promise, the actual realization of the story is horribly bad with flat stereotypical characters and embarassingly bad romantic scenes. And the secret sister? We never meet her or understand the relationship this book is supposed to be about. The book is just absurd on many levels. I am sorry I did not give up reading when I first felt so inclined, instead following it step by trite step to the very end. I hope I save just one reader from picking this one up!

I wish I didn't read it. I didn't like the way Christy kept sticking up for her sister, making excuses for her and not believing what people would say about her sister. Too much boring conversation about Indian archaeology. Much of the book wasn't that interesting. Certain scenes didn't make sense for me. For example, Cain asked Christy if she would like to have sex. She said yes, they began, then Cain stopped because he thought she might be using him. The next day, he said he was wrong, and asked if he could he have a second chance. For clarification, this book was originally published in 1993 as The Secret Sisters under the author name of Ann Maxwell.

I'm a real fan of her work. This book will not make my list of favorites. But it's still worth a read. This was really fiction. Her other works have deeper character development and the action at least possible.

The romantic suspense genre is definitely divided into books that are more romance, and those that are more suspense. This book is definitely a romance. I am always happy when I find a suspenseful book with a heroine who is an intelligent human being, as opposed to the kind of stupid ninny often portrayed in romances, who makes inexplicable decisions and falls into bed with unappealing men who behave inappropriately and abusively. I was not too happy with this book. It portrayed women as stupid and inept. Aaron Cane, the love interest, is very creepy. A smart, savvy woman would not become involved with him. Although Christy McKenna is presented as a wise and experienced professional, her actions and thought process quickly reveal her to be naive, childish, and stupid. It was hard for me to get involved in the mystery because I didn't like the characters.