Ponder Post: The Secret Sister

Apparently I like the author Brenda Novak. Many other people must also, since she is billed as a New York Times best selling author. I first read a book by her when I randomly selected up a paperback in a grocery store when I was helping my son Dan out when he had an emergency appendectomy last November. It was titled Until You Loved Me and I blogged about it in my post for 11/2/17, bemused that I had picked the book because of the colors in its cover picture. Until You Loved Me was one of three books in the Novak's Silver Springs series, all of which I have since read and liked.

Getting away from a series of books by this author, I explored The Secret Sister by Brenda Novak. Although it too contains non-negligible sexual attraction elements, it was much more of a mystery themed book rather than a romance novel genre.

The main characters are children's author Maisey Lazarao, her deeply troubled, close-to-suicidal, dysfunctional older brother Keith, and their domineering, controlling, cold mother Josephine. Maisey has traveled back from her book writing career in New York to a South Carolina island where she was raised. She has returned both to support her brother with his addiction issues and to recover from her recent divorce from an unfaithful spouse. Sadly, her father, with whom she was very close, died several years previous, and cannot soften the harshness of the mother.

Maisy moves into a bungalow on the coast of her childhood home island rather than stay at the palatial main house under the thumb of her haughty mother Josephine. Rafe Ramon, a contractor hired to refurbish the estate's coastline cottages after hurricane damage, lives in an adjacent bungalow with his young daughter and provides a romantic element in the storyline. He finds some old photos within the wall of his cabin that raise more questions than they answer.

As the title of the book might suggest, there are lurking allusions that Keith and Maisey may have had another sibling. Josephine is unapproachable for any discussion of the possibility. She adamantly avoids any reference to the slightest insinuation that such a situation could have existed. Did an older child ever exist? Did she murder her own daughter? Her lack of warmth certainly indicates she is capable. Since the father is deceased (convenient from a literary viewpoint) he is unavailable as a source to clarify the situation.  The story unfolds as Maisy doggedly pursues the truth, despite Josephine's strong maternal disapproval of both her forensic efforts and her growing relationship with Rafe as he single-parents his daughter. Josephine backs up her disapproval with powerful threats as only the matriarch of an island dynasty can do. The struggle, retaliation, and investigation is riveting. The plot twist at the end was very unexpected. I would recommend this book and give it 4 stars.