Little Sister by Gytha Lodge
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
**3.5-stars rounded up**
Little Sister is the 4th-book in Gytha Lodge’s DCI Jonah Sheens series, which is a Crime Thriller series with strong police procedural aspects.
This installment kicks off with a bang. While Jonah is relaxing, having a rare moment of free time at a local pub, a disheveled teenage girl wanders out of the woods.
She is a vision, with striking red hair and fair skin. She also happens to be covered in blood. Jonah approaches the young lady in order to help and that’s when the games begin.
The girl, Keely, assures him she is fine. It’s not her blood. It’s her younger sister Nina he needs to be concerned about.
After bringing Keely to the station house, Jonah begins the tedious work of unraveling her twisted story. He learns quickly that they do in fact need to be worried about Nina.
Their story is horribly sad. The two girls became wards of the state after the tragic death of their mother. Since that time, they’ve been bouncing around within the system. Recently the two girls went missing from their care home.
The story is built out in a very compelling way. As the Reader you get entire chapters of Keely telling their story from the beginning.
Jonah and team try to push her for answers more quickly, they have a missing and possibly injured girl to find, but Keely has a plan and she is going to tell this story her way. As frustrating as that is, it could be their only chance of finding Nina in time.
We get Keely’s recollections, we get the present perspective investigation, as well as a bit into Jonah and his team’s personal lives.
One thing I have always loved about this series is the detective team. They work so well together and each of them is interesting, bringing something unique to the table. I love the dynamic among them. It works so well.
In all honesty though, out of the four books in the series, I actually enjoyed this one the least. Initially, I was not going to round up to 4-stars, but after having time to reflect on it, this book really made me think and I appreciate that.
From the start I was loving this, but then there was one big twist that completely turned me off from it. I was so unhappy it went the way it did. It was like someone I really liked and enjoyed and was meshing with was stripped of their identity; was stripped of what drew me to them.
I know this won’t make much sense if you haven’t read this, but it is the best way I can think to explain why the narrative took such a nose dive for me.
With this being said, it’s clear I still really enjoyed this story. The aspects that disappointed me were more to do with my personal taste than with anything else.
I did enjoy getting more background progression on our regular characters, Jonah and Hanson in particular. I’m really looking forward to seeing where their personal stories go from here.
Thank you to the publisher, Random House, for providing me with a copy to read and review.
This was certainly one of my most anticipated series continuations and it was a lot of fun. I am looking forward to many more investigations with Jonah and the team!