If you’re looking for a page-turner of a book, can I recommend Sister by Rosamund Lupton?

It’s a psychological thriller with an unusual structure and an absolutely un-guessable ending – the sort of ending that made me want to go back to the beginning of the book and check that I hadn’t missed any obvious clues.

The story in a nutshell:

Beatrice’s younger sister, Tess, goes missing. The two of them have been incredibly close since childhood and Beatrice abandons her job in the U.S. to fly home to England to find out what has happened to her sister. The police make assumptions without proper investigation and close the case too quickly for Beatrice’s liking. But she carries on delving into her sister’s life, discovering things that she never knew and, finally, stumbling on something terrible.

There is one of those ‘Author Q and A’ sections at the end of the book and part of it deals with how Lupton developed her realistic characters. She says, “Before the last draft, I changed the central characters’ names and then read it again, as if meeting them for the first time to see if they seemed real.”

Sounds like a good tip for all of us!

And talking of tips, I hope I’m going to be able to give some to Dorinda Cass, the winner in my draw for a free critique. Dorinda lives in North Yorkshire and has a degree in Creative Writing. She is currently two-thirds of the way through a novel (well done, Dorinda!) and enjoys short story writing as well. Dorinda will be acting as a ‘guinea-pig’ for my planned critique service.