Colleen Mondor Reviews The Shadow Sister by Lily Meade

The Shadow Sister, Lily Meade (Sourcebooks Fire 978-1-7282-6447-9, $18.99, hc, 336pp) June 2023. Cover by Shaylin Wallace.

When did Lily Meade’s The Shadow Sister grab my attention? With the first sentence, which sets the tone for everything that follows: ‘‘My sister is a bitch, but that doesn’t mean I want her dead.’’ Sutton is missing, and Casey, of course, wants her found. No sister would want any different, no sister would dare to think of any other out­come. No sister would do anything other than stand before the media cameras and proclaim that Sutton is a great girl who needs to be home with her family. The problem is that for Casey, Sutton really has been terrible, and she can’t help but think that she vanished just to torture the people who love her.

There is no spoiler here that Sutton does get found. However, she doesn’t remember anything about where she has been for several weeks or why. Casey is certain that this is all an act. It’s just so convenient that Sutton now gets all the attention and Casey must continue to be the supportive sister. The fact that Sutton seems strangely drawn to Casey makes her behavior even more suspect. It has to be some big game on Sutton’s part, right? It couldn’t be anything else….

Welp, yeah, there is something else going on. Meade teases her plot out in careful little steps that take readers through the thriller-like narra­tive as Casey tries to find out just what was going on with Sutton in the days and hours leading up to her disappearance. Meanwhile, Meade uses flashbacks from each sister’s perspective to reveal their relationship from each side, showing how they became so fractured. Soon, as compelling as the book’s opening sentence is, readers will real­ize the truth behind the Cureton sisters is a lot more complicated and much more compelling.

As Casey investigates Sutton’s likely abduction, she learns that two other young Black women also vanished in the weeks before, but their dis­appearances have garnered very little attention from the media and police. Sutton and Casey are biracial (Sutton is light-skinned), and their Caucasian mother is a reporter who knows how to generate media attention. Casey presses for answers on the others who are missing as Sutton exhibits strange behavior while she struggles to remember what happened. Then someone else goes missing, and the sisters have to go with their gut to rescue her and finally find out just who is behind these terrible crimes and just how Sutton was able to come back home.

There is so much to talk about in The Shadow Sister! The narrative runs hard and fast and will have readers flying through the pages to find out everything behind Sutton’s kidnapping. The picture of this tight-knit family, with their historian father and his deep commitment to family ancestry often taking center stage, is lovely and the complexities behind Sutton and Casey’s relationship are riveting. The many mi­nor characters, from Sutton’s boyfriend to their much loved, now deceased grandmother (who shows up often in the flashbacks) are effectively drawn and all play a significant part in the plot. (Sutton’s cheerleader friends also end up being more significant than readers might expect.) The novel’s many layers reveal themselves a bit at a time, from the mystery to the stunning magic-based twist at the end, as the tension steadily increases. Ultimately, both sisters are heroic and getting to that point shows just how masterful a writer Meade truly is.

Finally, be sure to read the Author’s Note in which Meade explains how she explores genera­tional trauma in the novel. Her discussion of the various family dynamics at work is excellent and will likely compel readers to page back to certain sections and reconsider what they have read with a whole new level of understanding. The Shadow Sister is Lily Meade’s debut novel and hopefully the first of more to come. She had me with that opening sentence and never let me go; I’m sure many other readers will feel the same way.

This review and more like it in the July 2023 issue of Locus.

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