What My Sister Knew by Nina Laurin

Andrea gets in a wreck while driving home after work at 3:00 AM. She’s thinking that she saw someone standing in the road so she swerved and ran into a tree. Her adoptive mother picks her up from the hospital and takes her to their home. Detectives arrive and question her about her brother and show her pictures of mutilated victims from his murder spree. Andrea hasn’t spoken to her brother since he was incarcerated for starting the fire that killed their mother and stepfather fifteen years ago. Her adoptive family happens to be the family of the school bully that terrorized Andrea in middle school before the fatal fire. Andrea leaves and goes to her townhouse for privacy but she can’t help but think about something the detectives said. Her brother is on the loose and knows where she is. Another young woman is murdered and things become more complex. The story alternates between the present and the past, before the house fire and the book written about Eli. Andrea seems to be a bit of an unreliable narrator and it becomes a little difficult to follow the tidbits and figure out the truth of the past and present. The book kept me riveted and I wanted to know how it would end but the ending turned out to be ambivalent. Suspenseful thriller with an unreliable narrator, 4 stars!

Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky

Uniquely strange!

Seven-year-old Christopher is on the run with his mom. Her boyfriend Jerry was mean one too many times. They reach a new town and she finds a job cleaning at a nursing home. Christopher struggles with school until he reappears after missing in the woods for six days. He can’t remember anything about that time. Everything seems to get better for Christopher and his mom, Kate. Then Christopher sneaks out with his friends to build a treehouse in the forbidden woods. He gets sick and doesn’t sleep because of the nightmares he keeps having. His mother sees him falling apart and before she can fix anything their lives and whole world turn upside down. This story has an eerie, spooky feel. It’s part supernatural and part mystery with a Stephen King, albeit mellow, feel. Unique and strange, 4 stars!