{Release Day Review} The Good Sister by Gillian McAllister (@gillianmauthor @PutnamBooks)

An electrifying novel about the unyielding bond between two sisters, which is severely tested when one of them is accused of the worst imaginable crime.

Martha and Becky Blackwater are more than sisters--they're each other's lifelines. When Martha finds herself struggling to balance early motherhood and her growing business, Becky steps in to babysit her niece, Layla, without a second thought, bringing the two women closer than ever. But when Layla is found dead one morning, at only eight weeks old, Becky is charged with the unthinkable: the murder of her sister's child.

Nine months later, Becky is on trial and maintains her innocence--and so does Martha. Unable to shake the feeling that her sister couldn't possibly be guilty, Martha sets out to uncover exactly what happened that night, and how things could have gone so wrong. As the trial progresses, fault lines between the sisters begin to show--revealing cracks deep in their relationship and threatening the family each has worked so hard to build. With incredible empathy and resounding emotional heft, The Good Sister is a powerhouse of a novel that will lead readers to question everything they know about motherhood, family, and the price of forgiveness.

From the outside, Martha has it all together.  She has the perfect marriage, the perfect flat, the perfect job and now the perfect infant daughter.  
 
On the inside, she’s just trying to hang on.  The charity that she runs is completely overwhelmed trying to help refugee children and most days she has no idea how to comfort her own crying child. She reaches out to the one person who she knows can help her in her time of need – her sister.
 
Becky was always the irresponsible one.  She was pregnant at nineteen and jumped from one dead end job to another for years.  So Martha’s suggestion that she leave her current position to become her nanny seems like the perfect solution to all of their problems.
 
Neither one could ever foresee the tragedy that is about to happen. One so devastating that it threatens to steal both sanity and freedom.  One that will leave each their souls marked forever.

My sister. 

The woman who used to WhatsApp me first thing, every single day, without fail. The woman whose eyebrows I plucked on the eve of her wedding, both of us laughing as they became more and more uneven. The woman who painted my living room with me one Easter weekend. We didn’t stop chatting for the entire four days. 

My sister. My best friend, Becky. 

And now: Here we are. 

Cot death, the defense says—unexplained. 

Murder, the prosecution says.

I look across at my sister in the dock. 
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The woman accused of murdering my child.

The Good Sister is a stunning family drama that packs an unforgettable emotional punch! 
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The characters are painfully real.  Gillian masterfully reveals every vulnerability and flaw in a way that still allows a fragile kind of humanity to shine through.  

It’s there in the way that Martha deals with the guilt that most modern mothers confront with when they try to strike a balance between their careers and their children. It’s there in the way that Becky struggles with a lifetime of feeling completely inadequate. And once again, it's there in the ending that left a tender ache in my chest out of hope that somehow peace would find them all…

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