Sisters of Misery

I absolutely love getting to review teen thrillers. I so rarely read them anymore, but they're so much fun so I jump at the chance to review them. So of course, when I received an e-mail from BB asking if I would be interested in reviewing Megan Kelley Hall's debut Sisters of Misery, my response was a resounding YES!

I loved this book. Love, love, loved it! Just a few pages in, I was so engrossed, I completely forgot that the characters were ten years younger than me. It was gripping and chilling and page-turning and all those other adjectives that you're not supposed to use anymore because they've been thrown around like candy. I can't help it, though, this book was truly all of those things.

My review for Sisters will be up at bookbitch.com sometime next weekend. For now, here's a bit about it:

Maddie Crane knows all too well the privileges that come with having a good name. She’s friends with the right crowd and gets invited to all the great parties, and that’s just what her mother wants. When Maddie’s aunt Rebecca and cousin Cordelia arrive in town, they’re immediately pegged as outsiders. Maddie’s own mother would rather neither of them had ever come to town and fears the effects they will have on her carefully cultivated facade. Maddie is drawn to her cousin, however, in spite of her mother’s and her friends’ opinions. Soon Maddie is forced to choose between loyalty to her friends and love for her family. Her decision comes too late, though, and Cordelia’s suffering at the hands of Hawthorne’s elite culminates with her disappearance on Halloween. Now Maddie is determined to uncover her cousin’s fate at all cost.

Of course, the true test with this book will be when I send a copy to the Junior Junkies. I can tell you right now, to reiterate how very much I loved this book, I will not be parting with my copy. Nope, they'll benefit from my having read it because I desperately want to know what they think, but they'll also luck out because I'll be buying them a fresh new copy of their very own so that I can keep mine! Agh! The only bad thing about this book is that now I really want to know what's going to happen next.

Sisters is the first in a new series that I think is going to get much more heavy into the paranormal realm. For now, this one is nice and gothic-y with plenty of hints of witchcraft and precognition. There's a mysterious secret society, and the town the story takes place in has a sordid history that includes the murders of three sisters believed to have been practicing witches.

Like I said, dying to read the next one and see what happens! Until now, I'll just have to wait, but I highly suggest that you run out and pick up a copy when this hits shelves on the 29th. In my opinion, there's plenty of crossover appeal in this one - I think there are plenty of adults out there who will enjoy is just as much as I did, just beware of random teens stealing it when you aren't looking (my sisters would have walked off with mine long ago if they didn't live 4 states away).

Oh, and if you get hooked and are in the same boat that I am, feel free to share the agony and suggest it to someone else. My sister is a little publishing marketing genius in the works. Every book that I send her becomes the next must have at her high school. I take comfort in knowing that a whole teen population back home will be as impatient as I am to see where this one is going!