In this spellbinding and suspenseful debut, a young woman haunted by the past returns home to care for her ailing mother and begins to dig deeper into her sister’s unsolved murder.

Sixteen years ago, Sylvie’s sister Persephone never came home. Out too late with the boyfriend she was forbidden to see, Persephone was missing for three days before her body was found—and years later, her murder remains unsolved.
In the present day, Sylvie returns home to care for her estranged mother, Annie, as she undergoes treatment for cancer. Prone to unexplained “Dark Days” even before Persephone’s death, Annie’s once-close bond with Sylvie dissolved in the weeks after their loss, making for an uncomfortable reunion all these years later. Worse, Persephone’s former boyfriend, Ben, is now a nurse at the cancer center where Annie is being treated. Sylvie’s always believed Ben was responsible for the murder—but she carries her own guilt about that night, guilt that traps her in the past while the world goes on around her.

As she navigates the complicated relationship with her mother, Sylvie begins to uncover the secrets that fill their house—and what really happened the night Persephone died. As it turns out, the truth really will set you free, once you can bear to look at it.

The Winter Sister is a mesmerizing portrayal of the complex bond between sisters, between mothers and daughters alike, and forces us to ask ourselves—how well do we really know the people we love most?

my thoughts:

“The Winter Sister” was a book I picked up on a whim, gifted to me by a coworker, which made me feel obliged to give it a try. While it wasn’t necessarily bad, it failed to offer anything unique enough to truly capture my interest. As a thriller, its pacing felt unusually slow, and to be honest, there was very little about it that felt genuinely thrilling.

The most significant flaw lies in its characters. It’s difficult to find a single character in this book that readers can genuinely care about. Sylvie has spent her entire life punishing herself for what she believes was her role in her sister’s murder. Her mother, in turn, has drowned her grief in alcohol since losing her eldest daughter. Ben Emory, Persephone’s boyfriend at the time of her death, comes across as almost too perfect, making it hard to form any real connection with him. Persephone herself plays such a minor role in the story that I never felt emotionally invested in her or the people she left behind. Even in the scenes where she appears, her personality fails to shine through. While I certainly felt sympathy for her tragic fate, that emotional connection never deepened.

Sylvie embodies the archetype of a martyr. Convinced that she was to blame for Persephone’s death, she spent 16 years tormenting herself, denying herself love and any sense of purpose in life. As her aunt aptly observes, she merely “floated” through life—and she floats through the book in much the same way. She never evolves into a character I could truly care about; her lackluster personality and unwillingness to step out of her sister’s shadow made her difficult to root for. She never stands up to her mother, her boss, or anyone else. Consumed by Persephone’s death, she remains blinded by her own rigid perceptions of others—whether it’s Ben Emory, his father Will, their neighbor Tommy Dent, or even her own mother. There were countless moments where I wished I could shake her into seeing reason.

The plot, unfortunately, moves at a sluggish pace. From the very beginning, I found myself struggling to stay engaged. Admittedly, I was reading other books simultaneously, so my attention wasn’t fully devoted to this one—but that was only a small part of the problem. Beyond its slow pacing, the story felt utterly unoriginal. It was as if I had encountered this narrative countless times before, and I had pinpointed both the culprit and their motive long before reaching the halfway mark. The characters’ obliviousness to the truth staring them in the face only added to the frustration.

The one redeeming quality of “The Winter Sister” is its writing. Megan Collins has a talent for storytelling, painting vivid imagery with her prose and making it easy to visualize each scene. It’s rare to find a thriller that reads more like literary fiction, and in this regard, the book stands out.

Overall, “The Winter Sister” was a disappointment. If you’re new to thrillers and suspense novels, you might find some enjoyment in it. However, if you’re an avid reader of the genre, you’ll likely find it repetitive and disappointingly dull.