{"id":7974,"date":"2019-05-28T05:51:16","date_gmt":"2019-05-28T09:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7974"},"modified":"2019-05-28T05:51:16","modified_gmt":"2019-05-28T09:51:16","slug":"the-better-sister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7974","title":{"rendered":"****The Better Sister"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"wedding<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By Alafair Burke \u2013 Which is<\/em>\nthe better sister? An interesting question, but not one their husband Adam can\nanswer, because he\u2019s dead. In an intriguing plot complication, both women were\nmarried to the same man, just not at the same time. Nicky married him first, almost\ntwenty years ago, but her increasingly erratic behavior finally forced Adam to\nseek a divorce and custody of their toddler son Ethan. Soon he moved to\nManhattan where Chloe lives, and for a number of years he worked happily and\nsuccessfully as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chloe, now his wife, urged him into a much more lucrative job, a partnership at a white-shoe law firm. Adam hates it. Not only that, something\u2019s gone wrong in their relationship, though you can\u2019t quite put your finger on it\u2014yet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bit of a control freak, Chloe doesn\u2019t reveal the cracks in\nher armor right away. She\u2019s also a bit of a modern hero, using her magazine to let\nnot just media darlings, but everyday women tell their sexual abuse and\nharassment stories. Misogynistic Twitter trolls make her a target\u2014an unpredictable,\npersistent threat lurking in the background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Chloe arrives home late one night, Adam has been\nmurdered, which brings Nicky to Manhattan, hoping to reconnect with her now\nsixteen-year-old son and taking up residence in Chloe\u2019s home office. These\ntemperamentally opposite sisters circle each other like newly introduced\nhousecats. At least Nicky has stopped the drugs and the drinking, and she\u2019s\nstarted making jewelry to sell on Etsy. In an unexpected rebalancing of the\nscales of likability, you may find yourself more sympathetic to Nicky than\nChloe, who works so hard at being perfect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The police detectives clearly hope to pin Adam\u2019s death on Chloe, but when they realize Ethan has lied about where he was the night of his father\u2019s death, they focus laserlike on him. A third strong woman enters the story in the character of Olivia Randall, Ethan\u2019s lawyer. Chloe would like to manage the case, Nicky would like to do something rash, but Olivia stays in charge. But if Ethan didn’t kill his father, who did? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author Burke\u2019s real-life experience as a prosecutor serves the story well, and the details of the trial and the strategies of the attorneys make for excellent courtroom drama. The pressures of the trial bring forth a few \u201cI didn\u2019t see that coming\u201d surprises too. It\u2019s is an engaging, well-told tale that benefits from Burke\u2019s clear writing style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Myriam Zilles from Pixabay<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alafair Burke \u2013 Which is the better sister? An interesting question, but not one their husband Adam can answer, because he\u2019s dead. In an intriguing plot complication, both women were married to the same man, just not at the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"****The Better Sister - Like courtroom dramas? This book has a nail-biter!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,1567,3,126,32],"tags":[1407],"class_list":["post-7974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-lawyer","category-mystery","category-reading-2","category-thriller","tag-domestic-thriller"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/wedding-rings-rose.jpg?fit=361%2C426&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-24C","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7976,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7974\/revisions\/7976"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}