My Sister's Shadow
A Novel
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Envy and desire infiltrate the lives of twin sisters in this dark, Gothic suspense set in England and New York City, perfect for fans of Laura Joh Rowland and Hester Fox.
A mirror will never show you the truth.
England, 1904. Mirror twins Adelaide and Victoria have spent their lives in orbit of each other– doomed to be in the other’s shadow, their lives are intertwined and inextricable as each other’s identical inverse. Adelaide is dutiful and reserved, happy to remain in her childhood home, Harewood Hall, forever. Victoria wishes for a thrilling life, exploring the world and finding a great romance–but the twins cannot live apart.
Visiting Lord Stanley bewitches Victoria with his talk of a life of luxury in New York, but it is obedient Adelaide whom he marries against her will and to Victoria’s fury. Together, they all move to New York and begin a new life.
Adelaide finds herself trapped in a gilded cage on Fifth Avenue with no one but her angry and tempestuous twin for company. Amid the glamor of the upper class, Adelaide is captivated by the independent and educated women of the elite social circle Mrs. Astor’s 400. As Adelaide’s star rises, tensions begin to surface between the sisters, and as Adelaide grows apart from her twin for the very first time, Victoria descends into a rage-fueled darkness that threatens everything and anyone standing in her way.
Darker and darker with every turn of the page, this Gothic suspense will enrapture readers of Daphne du Maurier and Laura Purcell.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The relationship between identical twins fractures in this underheated gothic suspense novel from Gilchrist (The Mayfair Dagger, as Ava January). Though British sisters Adelaide and Victoria Windlass look exactly alike, they couldn't be more different: Adelaide is meek and malleable, Victoria haughty and assertive. In 1904, the girls' father summons James Henry Gilbraith, aka Lord Stanley, an earl who's decamped to New York City, to Harewood Hall, the Windlass estate. Lord Stanley shocks the family with a marriage proposal, prompting both sisters to move to the United States—Adelaide as a frightened bride-to-be, Victoria as her seething companion. As the sisters settle into their lives in New York, minor tensions between them grow into cavernous schisms, and Stanley's motives come into question. The plot simmers with the threat of violence, but Gilchrist takes too long to let things boil over. Though the action picks up in the final third, as Adelaide's mental health deteriorates, by then many readers may have abandoned ship. This misses the mark.
