A Book A Week

How close are you with your siblings? I'm lucky to have a great relationship with both my younger brothers, but with all three of us living in different cities, staying involved in each other's lives takes effort from all of us. So how do we manage to stay so close? Well, it's really a combination of random text messages, memes, phone calls, FaceTime, and taking every opportunity we can to spend time together on trips and vacations.

It's that idea of maintaining a sibling connection, especially through traveling together, that Nina Simon taps into with her latest novel, My Sister Is Going to Kill Me. Of course, based on that title, the sisters in this story may have a slightly more complicated relationship than my brothers and I do.

Sisters Liv and Mandy couldn't be more different. Liv is the practical older sister, organized and prepared for just about anything. Mandy flies by the seat of her pants. Despite their differences, the two look forward to their yearly trip together.

This year, it's Mandy's turn to choose, and naturally, she decides to do something adventurous. They're joining a group of strangers for a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, hoping that a few days away from their everyday lives will help revitalize their relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, for starters, one of their fellow travelers turns up dead.

Suddenly, this sister getaway has turned into a full-blown murder mystery. Someone on the trip is a killer, and with nowhere to go but downriver, Liv and Mandy are stuck with a group of people they barely know. If they're going to make it out of the Grand Canyon alive, Liv and Mandy will have to figure out who they can trust. More importantly, they'll have to figure out if they can still trust each other.

With My Sister Is Going to Kill Me, Nina Simon packages a story about two very different sisters inside a fast-paced murder mystery. It has pretty much everything I want from this kind of thriller. There's a killer on the loose, a wilderness setting that adds a constant sense of "will they make it out alive?" tension, and two main characters whose opposite personalities bring an extra layer of drama to everything happening around them.

There's also a backstory involving corporate greed and what happens when a company's desire to succeed comes at the expense of the health and well-being of its employees and customers. It's a lot to pack into one book. And somehow, Simon mostly makes it work.

Sure, the plot stretches believability, and I had the killer figured out fairly early on, but I was having enough fun to go along with it. The Grand Canyon setting gives the story a great sense of adventure, and the relationship between Liv and Mandy gave me something to care about beyond discovering who the killer is. My Sister Is Going to Kill Me may not be the kind of mystery that sticks with me for long, but it kept me entertained while I was reading. Sometimes, that's enough.

For more information, visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads. 

(2026, 70)