Blood Sisters by Jane Corry

A big fabulous 5 stars from me!!

Blood Sisters
Definition: A female bound to another in commitment and friendship by a ceremonial mingling of blood.

Vanessa and Kitty have taken the oath, they are truly blood sisters. Nothing can come between them. Friends until the end...right?

Alison and Kitty are sisters, to be precise they share the same mother so technically they are half sisters. Alison tries constantly to bond with her younger sibling to no avail. Kitty is very strong willed and extremely jealous of anything Alison does or has. Kitty makes this clear with her refusing to even be civil to Alison a great deal of the time and instead, insisting  her school friend Vanessa is her sister.

Tragedy strikes while the three girls are walking to school. Alison being the eldest is responsible for keeping the girls safe on the way to school. Instead, her sister Kitty and Vanessa are both hit by an automobile, killing Vanessa and leaving Kitty with brain injuries. Kitty now leads a life in a facility where she is not capable of functioning independently. She is unable to walk, speak or take care of herself. She is verbal but only in the sense that everything is garbled, often angry speech. Alison understandably lives in a world filled of guilt over the accident.

I really wanted to like Kitty, I felt that I really should since she was condemned to live such a difficult life after the accident.  Yet, I just could not bring myself to like her. She seemed a bit evil as a child and as an adult. I liked how the author had chapters that were completely from Kitty's point of view. We were allowed into her every thought. As a nurse, I found this very interesting and enlightening. It is so easy to assume that nonverbal people are not aware of everything around them, when in fact they may be more aware of things than you think. They may even notice more than a verbal person. How terrifying to not be able to speak what  you are thinking, yet I still did not like Kitty!

Jane Corry is quickly being added to my list of "must read everything they write" authors. I enjoyed My Husband's Wife and The Killing Type, both being 5 star reads from me. In my opinion this is her best work yet! The first half of this book was moving at a slower pace and then BAM! It suddenly turned into this book where I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. There were so many twists that I absolutely did not see coming. They were so well played out. I kept thinking that each twist and turn was the last one and then another clever little twist would play out. If you think it is starting out slow, hang in there because the author is just setting you up for one heck of a story.

Loved the book and now I have to get my hands on The Dead Ex!