3.5 out of 5 stars
I liked this book less than Indian Burial Ground. From what I understand, Sisters of the Lost Nation was actually published first. I can say that the writing quality improved a lot between the two books.
This book shines a light on a very hard issue of addiction, exploitation, and lack of resources that Native Americans face in this country. People can get hurt or killed on the rez, and the law enforcement in the next town over would just shrug and do the bare minimum. Women and girls go missing, and nobody even pretends to make an effort to find them. It’s hard to read about, especially considering that even though the Indigenous tribe in this book is fictional, the issues are very much real.
The story itself, though… well, let’s just say that it took me a very long time to get into it. I think the author’s choice to jumble the timeline was a mistake. We are just getting to know Anna and her sister, as well as the other characters, and we jump from Day 30 to Day 4, back to Day 15, etc., in the first few chapters. This creates confusion.
More importantly, it makes Anna feel neurotic, because the Anna on Day 4 behaves completely differently than the Anna on the day Grace goes missing. Yet they are literally in back-to-back chapters. I couldn’t paint a clear image of who Anna actually is and what makes her tick until the timeline finally streamlined. And I admit that I didn’t like Anna very much until then either. And most of it was due to the time jumps back and forth and all over the timeline.
I also wasn’t particularly impressed with the ending. I felt like the author very much wanted to have a happy ending to this rather bleak story, but it felt forced rather than earned. In my opinion, a more realistic ending would have given this story an even bigger impact.
PS: My thanks to NetGalley for my review copy.