If I had to describe this book in one word, the word I’d choose is intense. It has a twist that takes the characters beyond normal life, but at the same time this doesn’t change the focus of the story. Secret Sister is about love, life, choices, and fate. Cathy has found her soul mate in Nick and her best friend in Roxanne, but neither of those relationships stands still. Sometimes growth can be rocky, especially when not everything is known.

Trying to avoid spoilers, so I’m going to have to be quite vague on the elements of the story. Instead, I’ll talk about how it affected me.

Reading Secret Sister was a bit like being on a bullet train when you know there’s track out right ahead. It’s hard to stop reading, it’s hard to walk away, because everything is happening all at once, or more to the point, everything that happens has a hundred potential consequences. I needed to know how Nick would respond to something Cathy had to tell him, or why Roxanne behaved the way she did, or whether or not something else would break them apart, with them being Cathy and Roxanne, Cathy and Nick, and even Roxanne and Nick, not to mention the tangled relationships with half a dozen other characters.

I’ll give an example in Seth because he’s a minor character and his story is only used to help the main characters work through their issues. Here’s a man that all of the main, and many of the secondary, characters have seen in a professional setting. He counsels, but not as a psychologist. He is more a spiritual advisor without the religion requirement who meets with clients and sees through to the heart of what is happening, no matter how unbelievable it might be. Ironically (though not really because it’s controlled by the author) he is blind. He lost his sight in an accident as a young boy and is disfigured. Why this is worth mentioning is because he has found true love in a woman who could have been on any modeling platform in a heartbeat. She looks at him and sees the person he is rather than being distracted by his blindness or made shallow by her own beauty. The book looks at these types of questions, what attracts one person to another, and what meaning, and power or pain, is hidden in beauty.

That’s the kind of book this is. It looks at the heart of people, and at the real cost and benefit to traditional beauty, especially where love is concerned.

This is not a flashy, action-oriented thriller. There’s no clear villain who must be defeated or a world to save beyond the personal one. This is an intimate visit into the complicated lives of people who all seem to have everything in one definition of “everything” or another, when the truth shows they have flaws and weaknesses, that below perfection is doubt and conflict, but there is also love.

The twist is critical to all of this, and not mentioning it is killing me, but I want you to be able to experience the journey yourself. It didn’t come as a surprise to me when it came, so it’s well seeded, but knowing ahead might influence how you let this story absorb you. All I can say otherwise is this novel touches on the hard questions about love, marriage, and dealing with what life throws at you in a compelling and incredible way. It asks the question of what would you do if you had a second chance, but more to the point, explores the consequences of that chance and how it affects everyone around you.

P.S. I read this title as a NetGalley ARC in return for an honest review, and though I chose it for the wrong reasons (or with different expectations) I’m glad I did.