London-based sisters Ruth and Hannah are very close in spite of everything – their difference in age, their difference in outlook on life. Tied together by an upbringing with two selfish, disinterested parents (one actor, one writer, neither of them very successful) they’ve taken two very different paths in life: Hannah is professionally successful, has a loving boyfriend, has started a charity for disadvantaged children, while Ruth is an art-school drop out whose longest relationship is with a man who doesn’t give her the time of day. Yet they are close, do everything together, and once a year they go on holiday with just the two of them. Except this time, something goes wrong: Hannah convinces Ruth they need to jump off a cliff, but when they do, she hits her head and dies. Ruth is heartbroken and is left to pick up the pieces of her life, to find a way to live without the one person she could always rely on.
There are a few things about this book that I liked. It’s a pretty easy and engaging read. Ruth’s behaviour, at times, is infuriating, but understandable. Hannah is put on a pedestal by Ruth and while she does seem a little too good to be true, there are a number of quirks that keep her from becoming annoyingly saint-like, even if these quirks are a little incongruent occasionally. The book also shows that the process of mourning is different for everyone; while Ruth continuously eats her feelings, Hannah’s much-loved boyfriend Rowan wastes away because he can’t bring himself to eat. Ruth’s parents tend to pretend nothing happened. Eventually, everyone finds a way to cope, but it’s not easy, and it doesn’t happen overnight.
The writing, on the other hand, is a bit juvenile; it reads like a YA book, even though the main characters are in their late twenties and early thirties. It makes for an easy read but it also lacks depth. It’s very descriptive, and that’s a missed opportunity because the process of mourning is complicated and at times, I felt like a little more depth would’ve been needed to tackle the subject effectively. The relationship between Hannah and Ruth is both sweet and a little over the top; instances where they bicker are glossed over and instances where Hannah was the perfect big sister are enlarged, which makes sense because that’s what people do when they lose a loved one, but at other times Ruth has no trouble remembering her sister’s less pleasant sides. I was also somewhat weirded out by Ruth’s changed relationship with Rowan, and the turning point, where Ruth begins to get her life back together, seems to come a little too abruptly, as if the author realised her word count was up. I also didn’t really jibe with this book’s sense of humour, but that may just be me.
Ultimately, though, I think this book just wasn’t for me. I don’t have a sister, and while I’ve lost people in my life they’ve never been people I was particularly close to, and their deaths rarely came as a surprise. I can’t really vouch for how accurate the book is in that regard. Aside from that, it was an okay read.
