From her Q & A about the novel with Mitzi Brunsdale for Publishers Weekly:
How much did your own family relationships affect your writing of Sister?Sister is one of Sophie McKenzie's ten top teen thrillers.
My bond with my own sister certainly has been exceptional, and I consider it a gift, the kind you receive whether you deserve it or not. So I really, really wanted to explore this relationship, and when my youngest child went off to school about five years ago, I finally had time to start the novel.
You also present a complicated mother-daughter relationship through Beatrice's long letter to her murdered sister, Tess. How do the mother-daughter connection and the bond between the sisters interact?
These relationships climax when Beatrice, a career woman, and her mother visit Tess's grave. Beatrice realizes that while she had always sent flowers to their mother on the birthday of the little brother, Leo, they had lost—"thoughtfulness at a distance"—Tess, whose hippie London lifestyle Beatrice had deplored, had always come to see her mother on those sad birthdays. Seeing her mother become the "mum of babyhood" again through Tess's eyes opens a whole new consciousness about her own life for Beatrice herself. As her bond with her dead sister tightens, it also...[read on]
"[Sister] is both a taut and compelling thriller and a beautifully written account of love and frustration between sisters," wrote Alafair Burke. "It's a remarkable debut that deserves all the attention it is sure to garner."
--Marshal Zeringue