Sisters of Berlin ||#LoveBooksGroup #Juliet Conlin

Welcome to my stop on the Sisters of Berlin Blog Tour.

I extend my appreciation to Love Book Tours and Black &White Publishing for making this book available to me. A digital copy of this book was provided to me for an honest review. As always I will be including my REVIEW POLICY for anyone wishing to work with me. Please check out other bloggers that are participating in this book tour. This is my second time working with the Love Book Tours and I just love it. I have enjoyed the books I have read so far and this one is no different.

Let’s get into it…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Title: Sisters of Berlin

Author: Juliet Conlin

Publication Date: 25th March 2020

Publisher: Black & White Publishing

Blurb

Sisters of Berlin is set in Berlin 2019. The 30th anniversary of the fall of the Wall and the city is gearing up for a celebration of unity and liberation. But, beneath the surface, are those for whom the divisions and allegiances of the past remain close to home. In her hushed and leafy corner of Berlin, Nina’s life is a comfortable, conventional one until her younger sister Marie, a free-spirited writer, is attacked and left for dead.

For Nina, Marie’s brutal demise – and that of her unborn child – tips her own carefully controlled life into a nightmare. Stonewalled by official incompetence and subterfuge, Nina begins to realize that her sister’s past and the secrets of the once-divided city are connected in unimaginable ways. As she seeks out justice for Marie, Nina becomes caught in a tangle of obsessions, lies, and hidden truths that threatens to destroy her marriage, her livelihood, and all that she holds dear.

Purchase Links: BLACK & WHITE SHOP

Review

Honestly, this book tore my heart out. Before I go into the review, I do have to point out trigger warnings for depression, eating disorders, domestic violence, sexual assault, emotional neglect, violence, murder, and much more. Basically, if you can think of anything triggering, it is in this book, but if you are able to read this book with this in mind then I promise you, you will never forget this book. I do think that there is a lot of up and down writing moments in this book, some parts felt a little flat and I just wanted to know who or what happened but I guess that is where the mystery comes in.

So we follow Nina who has just found out about the violent death of her sister and is unable to come to grips with this monumental loss. She is unable to move on because she remains baffled by why someone would want to kill her sweet sister (who was also pregnant). The grief she feels also brings to the surface issues that Nina was also dealing with her marriage and in her life. Having previously suffered from an eating disorder, the grief she feels begins to manifest in her diet and she begins to struggle to control her pain by translating it into strict control of her diet.

With all these happening she still has to hold her struggling clinic together and she is faced with the fear of losing a patient who has evidently been abused (You can understand how all of these just compounds). When she goes to her late sister’s apartment to clear out her things, she visits the old neighbor who tells her things that could positively contribute to the investigation into her sister’s death. She begins to find out more about her strange sister’s writing and her relationship with the Neo-nazis.

She begins to wonder if her sister’s engagement with the group was for research or if it was what got her killed. Little did she know that the killer was closer to her than she thought.

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to like this book as much as I did, I just felt that she took things a little to the extreme, I mean her parents were also suffering and grieving for the loss of their child. I wanted to feel sorry and sad for the parents but I just couldn’t because of the magnitude of Nina’s pain. Then I began to think, was it guilt? or was it just the underlying issues that Nina had? Or was it the relationship between Nina and her sister Marie? But who am I to tell anyone how to grieve. Who am I to say that one needs to move on?

Oh and by the way, Nina’s husband is an ass, I mean he was understanding but he is still an ass, I don’t think that was the right thing to be asking for another child, I mean come on, how insensitive can he get! I do also have to appreciate the historical lessons I got in Sisters of Berlin about Germany and the Nazi’s. I was also really angry that she burnt all her sister’s work, I know she made a promise but all the hard work Marie did was just for nothing. I guess that is what they mean when they say respect the wishes of the dead!

Rating

I gave this book 4.5 out of 5 stars

Thanks for reading