Pretending to Dance by Diane Chamberlain - 5* Review

Available here from Amazon.co.uk

When the pretending ends, the lying begins . . . Molly Arnette is good at keeping secrets. As she and her husband try to adopt a baby, she worries that the truth she's kept hidden about her North Carolina childhood will rise to the surface and destroy not only her chance at adoption, but her marriage as well. Molly ran away from her family twenty years ago after a shocking event left her devastated and distrustful of those she loved. Now, as she tries to find a way to make peace with her past and embrace a healthy future, she discovers that even she doesn't know the truth of what happened in her family of pretenders.

Molly's story is told alternately though her modern day life in San Diego and her life as a fourteen year old in North Carolina, it tells the tale of an unsure - slightly geeky kid from a really good, close family - albeit a slightly unconventional one. She's extremely happy and has a really wonderful father, until something unthinkable happens.

She hides what happened in her childhood well until she and her husband decide to adopt a child, and the subject of open adoption (where the birth mother is involved in the child's life) comes up, then memories and hidden fears from her past come flooding back, with that and bad news it brings her memories very much to the fore of her mind.

This was a truly wonderful book, one that will stick with me for a very long time. I instinctively felt a huge pull towards Molly's wonderful father, he is a therapist and just handles every situation in the most amazing way - I wish I had his 'answer for everything' way with my teenagers! I also felt a connection with Graham as like him, I too suffer from Multiple Sclerosis, and that's where it got sticky for me. If you read the book you will see that extremely hard hitting issues are tackled that kind of scared me - a lot! However Chamberlain makes it quite clear that Graham has a rare and extremely aggressive form, still made me think and I would probably exercise caution if you are a sufferer, maybe I'm too sensitive - I don't know?

I do still feel the HUGE need to give this book five stars as it was a truly wonderful book and a really wonderful story! It will be a read you won't forget...

Review copy kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain

Buy HERE from Amazon.co.uk

What if everything you believed turned out to be a lie? 

Riley MacPherson is returning to her childhood home in North Carolina. A place that holds cherished memories. While clearing out the house she finds a box of old newspaper articles - and a shocking family secret begins to unravel.

Riley has spent her whole life believing that her older sister Lisa died tragically as a teenager. But now she's starting to uncover the truth: her life has been built on a foundation of lies, told by everyone she loved.

Lisa is alive. Alive and living under a new identity. But why exactly was she on the run all those years ago, and what secrets are being kept now?

As Riley tries to separate reality from fiction, her discoveries call into question everything she thought she knew about her family. Can she find the strength inside herself to decide her future.

As readers of my previous blog may remember I am a HUGE Diane Chamberlain fan! I love her ability to tell a story and capture the reader instantly, I hate books where I have to wait for endless chapters before I'm drawn in, this never happens with Chamberlain. If you have never read one she has a massively long back catalogue to work through!

The Silent Sister starts with an intriguing prologue, then sees high school counsellor Riley McPherson returning to her childhood home to deal with the aftermath of her father's death, tidying up his estate etc... It becomes apparent quite quickly that there are secrets within this family. Riley's older brother, Danny, is a tortured soul. He is an Iraq war veteran and is badly affected by the death of their eldest sister, Lisa, a musical child prodigy who they had been brought up to believe committed suicide after battling with depression. His anger fuels him and his relationship with Riley is a strained one.

The further Riley gets into ordering her father's paperwork and belongings, the more secrets she discovers, and each one shocks her further to the core, and before long she realises her whole life is built on deceit. She finds a box of newspaper articles that state quite clearly that Lisa murdered a man, her violin teacher, and drowned herself before she came to trial. But as she delves further, the rumours begin that makes Riley wonder, is Lisa really dead?

As with all Chamberlain's books I was hooked from the very beginning, and read quite quickly through to the last page. However...I was slightly disappointed? I found the characters slightly two dimensional, and really struggled with the character of Danny - Riley's brother, I get that he was a tortured soul, terribly angry about his childhood, blighted by the apparent death of his sister, but it lacked any progression, resolution, anything really on his part. In fact I always assumed the story was on the cusp of revealing some huge secret about him, it didn't.

The plot was cleverly woven, yet a part of me wonders if there was maybe a little too much to weave? If a slightly less complicated plot could have allowed for more depth in the characters? It lacks the suspense and twists in the plot as some of her older novels, The Midwife's Confession being one of my favourites. 

I did, overall, find this offering quite predictable, but still a really good read.