Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for providing this Advance Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review of the book; all opinions expressed in the review are my own.

“Shadow Sister,” written by Lindsay Marcott, tries being a psychological thriller, a horror story and a gothic thriller all at once but succeeds doing none of them. The story begins when our protagonist, Sarah, gets interested in Jamie, the new professor at the college she had been attending for the past months. We then cut to Ava, Jamie’s sister, who is still struggling to cope with her mother’s death that had happened in her childhood. For the past few years, she has become increasingly convinced that her mother hadn’t died of natural causes as concluded by her doctors. 

Next, the reader is immersed slowly into the mind of Didi, a girl who had an unhealthy obsession with Sarah in high school and even tried to push her off a ledge to kill her. We are taken into the minds and psyche of these people, both during the present and about 13 years ago, when Didi used to work in Jamie’s dilapidated mansion. Marcott takes the reader through a twisted maze of paranoia, mind games and manipulation, set in a highly atmospheric setting that gave me the chills just while reading it.

The book is a fairly entertaining read with a good narrative style and odd characters. The story is eerie enough to capture my attention, including some good scare moments. Almost all the characters in the story are emotionally damaged, twisted people and the author has given them solid backgrounds that explains why they are this way. She also uses their weirdness as a canvas to create the most twisted story a person can think of. However, for the same reasons, these characters get quite difficult to connect with, as they seem quite unreal at times. 

I did see some of the twists coming, but I still quite enjoyed the story and would recommend this book for all who like to read atmospheric thrillers containing chilling moments.

This book gets 4 out of 5 stars.