Am so tired of hearing people say that nice girls finish last. Meghan Quinn throws that adage right out the window with Julia. She's the girl that constantly gets overlooked, until the day somebody got caught looking back. It's love at first sight for golden boy Bram Scott, when he sees his best friend's sister for the first time. The guy with all the right moves, proceeded to fall flat on his face. Now that he finally has her in his sights, all bets are off. He knows what he wants and will use any means necessary to get it. Failure is not an option. He's playing for keeps. The Secret to Dating Your Best Friend's Sister uses humor to knock down stereotypes and deliver some valuable truths. Quinn is good at laughing her way right into a heart with her at times unconventional, but always irresistible characters.

Willow is with Ajay on the way to the wreck dive. She would not have been on this dive without Ajay. Willow and Ajay talked to the rest of the divers. . Guy is one of the divers and Ajay told him willow had dived the Russian tanker with him. That had a good job. Willow had been in between contracts when Ajay contacted her to see if she was free to work this dive. The dive was a cruise liner that had sunk from a rogue wave. It so happened it was Willow’s father’s and her parents had died when the liner sank. Willow was seven when her parents died. Willow had been raised by her aunt who had been watching her when the ship sank. The commercial diving world is tight and it’s hard to fit in especially being a woman. Ajay thinks Willow is too fussy when it comes to men comparing them all to her father. The Guy mentions the rich person who owned the liner had died to and Willow says that had been her dad. Willow had wanted this dive for a long time. Willow felt an unbearable sadness when she seen the liner lying broken at the bottom of the sea. Willow now had to try to stifle her grief and sadness and concentrate on this dive. Willow was the first one going into the ship the other divers fell back. Than less than five minutes and something was wrong and Willow and all the divers were forced to leave. Willow told Guy she had got into swimming because of her parents. The next morning Willow got a call from Ajay and he said the divers found something that may have been her mother’s. It was the purse Willow had bought with her dad for her mother’s thirty fifth birthday. But there was a pendant in the purse with the initials C & N on it. Thought Willow’s moms name was Charity , her dads name had been Dan. When Willow got back to her room she called her aunt and asked her about the pendant but her aunt was lying and Willow knew it. Willow went to her childhood home as her Aunt had finally convinced her to sell it. She had never went back after her parents had died. Than Willow finds an envelope with her name on it that was about a photographer’s exhibit but her Aunt had thrown it away without even telling Willow. She then learns her mother had loved submerged forests and had wanted to visit every one of them in the world. Niall Lane was the photographer who’s exhibit she had been invited to view and her mom used to dive together. When charity had been younger she had two sisters but one-faith had died in a tragic car accident. Niall had been Charity’s first love. This managed to come between the other two sisters - Charity and Hope. charity had a secret based on Faith’s death and Charity kept the secret to protect those she loved the most. Charity ended her loving relationship with Niall because of Niall’s involvement in Faith’s death as Hope couldn’t stand being around Niall after that. Charity went on to marry Dan but she still remained close to Niall.

I really enjoyed this book. I liked the plot and the pace. It was an emotional good read. There is: romance, first loved, submerged forests, treachery, death, secrets, lies, mystery, lose of a sibling, death of parents, and so much more. I liked the two POVs in this book. I didn’t mind jumping between the past and the present and that usually annoys me but the way the author did this just was great. I liked the surprise at the end of this book a lot. This story grabbed me from the start and kept me until the end of the book. I didn’t want to put it down. I loved the characters and the twists and turns of this book and I recommend it.  

I received a copy from Netgalley.

I came across this book whilst browsing Netgalley looking for something different to read. The synopsis caught my attention, and if I was flipping through channels and this was a movie I would have watched it.

I can’t say I found it particularly gripping or emotional. By half way through I was bored with the plot. I’m usually wary of books that claim things like “the most emotional gripping thing you will ever read!” (or along those lines) in a title headline. It’s always seemed unnecessary to me. Let the novel stand on its own and let the readers judge. Don’t bombard the title lines with crap like that. It’s annoying! (Certainly is to me, anyway). I don’t remember seeing that bit when I initially requested the title).

The story focuses on a then and now method of telling. There were initially three sisters, Hope, Charity and Faith who lived in a small English village by the sea, where they hung out with their mate Niall. In their late teens Faith is tragically killed in an accident, Niall the guilty driver. In 2016 Charity’s daughter Willow has returned to the cottage where Charity lived with Hope looking for some answers about her mother’s past. Charity had an interest in diving looking for underwater forests. So does her daughter. Aunt Hope is stingy with information and comes off as quite cold. Charity is deceased as well now and Willow has mostly been raised by Aunt Hope. Clearing out the cottage Willow finds some things about Niall and Charity and sets off to find out more, especially since Niall is now a big name in underwater forest diving and photography.

The then chapters tell the story taking place in the late 1980s of when Charity and Hope are living together running a little café in the same town they’ve always lived in. Charity still wants to do her diving, but it’s more a hobby these days, she’s a social worker whilst Hope is a budding poet/writer. The town is captivated by dazzling rich new comers David and Lana when Charity inadvertently winds up rescuing Lana from a car accident. Getting to know the couple, Niall winds up coming back into the picture and before long sparks are flying.

The novel flips between the stories of Charity and Niall, David, Lana and Hope in the past, whilst in the presence Willow is following in Charity’s footsteps going along what appears to be the same route Charity took in her youth.  There seemed to be a lot more going on in Charity’s storyline. She’s developing strong feelings for Niall which brings up a mess of emotion due to Faith’s tragic accident, which is Hope is furious about. Then there’s David, there’s intense chemistry between them, not helped by ditzy Lana who’s a total lush by this point with her own problems.

I did find the plot got a little repetitive. It’s the same troubling feelings for Charity over and over. I can understand where she’s coming from. Some of the little twists in Willow’s chapters are trying to be deep and emotional, and again I can understand why but there was just something missing for me. To be fair the twist at the end revolving around some secrets before and after Faith died were quite a surprise I didn’t see coming. One character was considerably more twisted than they appeared.

There was an awful lot of it about underwater forests and diving which kind of made my eyes gloss over a bit. Though there was some interesting info in the author’s note for those interested in looking into more about the subject.  I did like the sense of family and togetherness between Charity and her sister Hope, and later on echoed in the relationship between Willow and Hope. Though there was just something kind of “meh” about the whole thing for me.

It wasn’t really a bad book, just not my taste in the end, I guess.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bookouture for granting my wish to view the title.

Started out slowly and took a while to get to the plot. But it's really taking off right now. So I can't wait to see how this book ends. I really love the love interest Rafe a whole lot. I will do a review when I finish the book. 

Initial reaction: Leave it to Brenda Novak to keep me up during a late night glued to one of her stories. "The Secret Sister" falls quite firmly in the romantic suspense category - revolving around a family with many complications in their relationships and a mystery that threatens to tear them apart for purported events. I found myself drawn into the carefully developed characters and the overarching mystery, though I'll admit I was still left with questions that were either loosely expounded upon or had some flaws in the progression to where they weren't entirely answered. It still came across as a solid read for me - 4 stars.

Full review:

"The Secret Sister" had my attention from the very beginning on the strength of its premise. Maisey returns home after a series of horrible events in her life, but returning home isn't exactly a welcome homecoming. Considering her family history, it's little wonder. Her brother Keith is a recovering -on again, off again - drug addict. Her father had passed away many years ago, and her mother, Josephine, is a controlling matriarch who will use every bit of her money and power (a given with the family name and presence in the community) to undermine those who cross her, including Maisey.

Maisey finds a bit of refuge with Rafe and his 5-year-old daughter Laney. Maisey has a bit of awkward history with Rafe, but their chemistry is very strong and believable in its alternating waves of push and pull. When Rafe finds a hidden box in a wall of what he thinks are Maisey's baby pictures, it starts a tense mystery and huge rift in the family as secrets and doubts float to the surface. Maisey's determined to get to the bottom of events, and she meets some notable resistance in her journey to do that.

I definitely liked the focus on the strong characters in this narrative. It cycles between different POVs (Maisey's, Rafe's and Josephine's) and all three characters are strongly asserted for their motivations and emotions. Novak's prose is spot on for its intimacies, and I felt invested in both the development of the relationships here as well as the mystery. I did feel that as the book went on, certain plot points felt a bit thin in their drawing, particularly in the push to the end where some threads were left untied, but I still found the conclusion satisfying even when I had an idea of the direction it would go.

This is the first in a series, so I'm looking forward to seeing more of the events on Fairham Island.

Overall score: 4/5 stars.

Note: I received this as an ARC from NetGalley from the publisher Harlequin Mira.