September and July were born just ten months apart and have spent their lives being completely inseperable. When a dramatic incident takes them and their mother away from their hometown of Oxford, the family retreat to the Yorkshire coast, where a slow creeping dread begins to set in. This haunting literary read gave me such strong Shirley Jackson vibes and I was thoroughly disturbed by the toxic dynamics between the sisters. I figured out the twist just before it was revealed but I was still shocked by the nature of what really happened. Sisters serves as a stark reminder that those who have shaped us the most never leave us.

I read this mostly on the strength of Johnson’s debut novel and did not really know what to expect from it. The blurb is intentionally vague and I was unprepared for how creepy this book was. I was hooked from the very beginning though, racing through this book breathlessly, torn between wanting to keep reading and dreading what was to come – that something is not quite right with September and July is obvious from the beginning. Johnson skillfully leads the reader through her labyrinthian narrative told from the perspective of July, the younger of the two sisters and the more quiet and withdrawn one, always in the shadow of her slightly older and domineering sister September. The sibling relationship is at the core of this novel (and I am always a fan of well-told sibling stories) and that it feels so real is one of the big strengths. Their relationship is creepy and obsessive, they are so close to each other that even their mother has no place in their vincinity. Parts told in third person from their mother’s perspective underscore how weirdly codependent the two sisters are. September often treats July abysmally, and Johnson leans into the inherent creepiness of children’s games when she has her teenaged main characters play them with an increasing escalation of violence.

After some tragedy the family leaves Oxford for a house by the ocean owned by their dead father’s sister; here the mother takes to her room and leaves her daughters to roam Settle House, which is just as unsettling as the name indicates. The tragedy in the wake of July being bullied at school is one of the central mysteries of the book as July does not seem to remember what exactly happened that made her mother abruptly leave Oxford and decide to live in a house she hates as it brings only bad memories of the abusive father of her children. July’s narration is often unclear and I early began wondering how reliable she was, as her mind seems to be fragmenting. The novel works best when Johnson plays with this unreality she invokes, when it isn’t at all clear what is happening. Her fragmented, allusion-rich prose coupled with her vivid and unsettling imagery mirror’s July’s mental state excellently. As such the ending, when things became more clear again, did not work for me as well as the parts that preceeded it. But even so, the pitch perfect prose and an impressively oppressive atmosphere made this a rewarding reading experience that I was nevertheless ultimately glad to be done with – this book gave me nightmares.

Content warnings: bullying, assault, revenge porn, vomit, underage drinking, blackouts, depression, spousal abuse, death of a loved one

My thanks to Vintage Digital for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Sisters’ by Daisy Johnson.

This is Johnson’s second novel following her highly acclaimed ‘Everything Under’, that was shortlisted for the 2018 Booker Prize. I received an ARC from its publishers, Vintage, via NetGalley.

‘Sisters’ is an atmospheric story with touches of the Gothic and folk horror. The teenage sisters of the title are July and September, born ten months apart. They are extremely close, almost like twins.

Following an initially undisclosed incident, their mother, Sheela, has withdrawn them from their school in Oxford and brought them to Settle House, a run down properly on the North Yorkshire coast. It was the house where Sheela had lived in the early years of her marriage and where September had been born.

Much of the novel is made up of July’s stream-of-consciousness that does slowly reveal the events in Oxford as well as the complex nature of the bond between the sisters in which September is clearly the dominant sibling. These thoughts create the sense of a dream; especially later in the novel when they become quite surreal.

I will admit that I am not a great fan of stream-of-consciousness narration though it does seem to be favoured in works of literary fiction.

There is no doubt that Johnson’s lyrical writing style is exquisite. This is a novel that I would have loved to have on audio as I feel that format is very suitable for stream-of-consciousness.

This was a novel that had all the ingredients that I love especially its haunting setting and elements of the fantastical. Yet although I admired it, I struggled at times to feel a connection with the narrative.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

Daisy Johnson's second novel more than lives up to the hype of her first. Dark and haunting, it explores the stifling relationship between siblings July and September. The horror in this novel is an excellent, creeping sense of dread that builds throughout. I loved it.

Sisters by Daisy Johnson was my first Read from this author.

I really didn't know what to expect from this but I was pulled in from the first word.

The writing is very poetic and you really connect to these two sisters as the story goes on.

If you want a quick, poetic read then look no further.

Born just ten months apart, July and September are as thick as thieves, never needing anyone but each other. Following a case of school bullying, the teens have moved away with their single mother to a long abandoned family home near the shore. In their new isolated life, July finds that the deep bond she had ways shared with September is shifting. A creeping sense of unease descends inside the house. Outside, the sisters push the boundaries of behaviour - until a series of shocking encounters test the limits of their shared experience and forces shocking revelations about the girls past and future.

July and September are inseparable. They move away to their abandoned family home with their mother, Sheela, after a horrible accident at school. The details of the accident are tantalising held back until the end. This is one of those books you can't say too much about except that it's beautifully written, sinister and creepy.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Vintage and the author Daisy Johnson for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This study of grief and depression is unnerving and weird, as we learn in flashbacks what has driven two sisters and their Mum to take refuge in a remote cottage.

The sisters were born only 10 months apart and are unnaturally close and there is also an element of unreliable narration.

I read this in one sitting and have been unable to stop thinking about it since - highly recommended.

'The Settle House is load-bearing. Here is what it bears: Mum's endless sadness, September's fitful wrath, my quiet failures to ever do quite what anyone needs me to do, the seasons, the death of small animals in the scrub-lands around it, every word that we say in love or anger to one another.'

Following on from the Booker-shortlisted 'Everything Under', Daisy Johnson's new novel underlines her position as one of the finest young novelists around. This is a compelling, taut, haunting tale that will draw you in and leave you gasping for air. Sheela drives her two daughters, September and July, from Oxford to the isolated Settle House, owned by her late husband's family. From the get-go there are serious overtones of gothic/horror: the house is somewhat dilapidated, yet seems to live and breath like an organism; as the family arrive the rain clouds gather; Sheela locks herself away in her room, leaving the two 16-year-olds to fend for themselves. If fans of Shirley Jackson think this sounds familiar then yes, Johnson is clearly paying homage to Jackson. But have no fear, for this book very much stands on its own merits, primarily driven by Johnson's starkly beautiful prose. We see most of the book through the eyes of the younger July, and as the events that led to the family escaping Oxford to this Yorkshire retreat are slowly revealed, the relationship between the two sisters changes drastically.

In many ways this is an almost impossible book to review, because the response hinges so much on the plot. The 'twist', if you want to put it in those terms, is not necessarily a surprise but it will unnerve you, and the final few pages just ramp up the tension even more. Admirably, Johnson refuses to wrap everything up in a nice neat little package, leaving the reader to close the book with a certain sense of unease.

Although the book is relatively short, the depth of Johnson's prose means that you must take time to savour the words on the page. She wonderfully builds the gothic tension, but through the stark beauty comes moments of sheer lyricism: 'Dreams were tangles, dreams were marshes, dreams were the coffin our father was buried in.' Or: 'In the Settle House my body is disconnecting from itself, losing shape and form, tangling with memory.' Few writers of her generation can write prose like this, which is simultaneously lyrical and unsettling.

Genuinely creepy and beautiful. 5 stars.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

July and September are sisters and seem extremely close, almost like twins. There has been an incident in Oxford and they have moved to the Yorkshire Moors with their mother Sheela. The sisters tell the tale, a story of complicated family relationships in a haunting and lyrical novel. There are real twists and turns along the way in a creepy and utterly absorbing novel.

This is one of those books which is really hard to review without saying too much!

The obvious comparison is to Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle with a modern day update. Sisters tells the story of sister July and September, mostly from July's perspective. The book is haunting, filled with moments of eerie dread and suspense, but with no clear reason for why it feels so unnerving.

For the first part of the book, parents are largely absent and it starts to move a bit into a "girls gone wild" trope which I love, but then as the book progresses you get the perspective of the girls' mother Sheela, which adds a new layer to the narrative.

I read this over a couple of days because I couldn't put it down. The writing is wonderful, metaphorical while still being clear and readable, with some sentences that stop you in your tracks.

I really loved this. It is creepy and unsettling and ominous and exactly what I wanted to read right now.

This is the first book I read by this author and won't surely be the last. It's atmospheric, eerie and gripping.
It kept me on the edge, it was like being punched and loving it.
The author is an excellent storyteller and I loved how she describes the relationship between the two sisters.
The character and plot development are excellent.
It's an excellent read, strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

<blockquote>I am drunk. Yes. I think then, as I have so many times, she is the person I have lways wanted to be. I am a shape cut out of the universe, tinged with ever-dying stars – and she is the creature to fill the gap I leave in the world. I remember the promise we made years ago, how we’d written it down so we wouldn’t forget... [loc. 724]</blockquote>

UK Publication Date now 13th August 2020, delayed from early July ... thanks to NetGalley for a free review copy in exchange for this honest review.

September and July, both around sixteen years old, are inseparable. They were born ten months apart and have been codependent ever since. Their mother Sheela, a British-Indian writer and illustrator, whose popular childrens' books are based on her daughters, feels excluded by their bond. September is the dominant one, the one who invents games ('September says lie in the road when the lights are red'), the one who demands that July shares her birthday, the one who withholds love as a form of punishment: the one whose anger makes her mother nervous. When July, the younger and less assertive of the sisters, falls prey to vicious school bullying, September seeks vengeance, with terrible consequences.

Sheela decides they need to leave Oxford and seek shelter in the house where September was born. The Settle House is an isolated place on the Yorkshire coast, intermittently let to holidaymakers by the sisters' aunt Ursa (sister of their dead father Peter), and broken into from time to time by the locals. The house is as much a character, a presence, as any of the humans who live there. There are secret passages in the walls; lightbulbs don't last; the house is full of noises, and there is a sense of busy-ness, 'a creasing in the air like the moment just after a train has passed'.

This is a claustrophobic and occasionally terrifying novel, quite different to Johnson's earlier <a href="http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2019/03/201912-everything-under-daisy-johnson.html"><i>Everything Under</i></a> but sharing a sense of ominous forces just beyond the edges of perception. I reread for this review, and even knowing what was coming the lines 'this is not what happened' were thoroughly chilling, and the final few pages are harrowing. 'My sister is a black hole my sister is a bricked-up window my sister is a house on fire my sister is a car crash my sister is a long night my sister is a battle my sister is here.' [loc 1531]. <u>That's</u> where the horror lies, not on the beach in the dark, not in the old bird-watching hide, not in the overheated house with Sheela shutting herself away upstairs. While the 'twist', which I shan't explain or explore, may be predictable, its outcome is not.

I suspect Daisy Johnson will be an auto-buy for me in future: like Tana French, whose fiction has similarities of ambience, she combines the mundane and the strange, in excellent prose and without explication.

I hadn’t read Daisy Johnson’s previous, Booker shortlisted, novel, but was intrigued by the description of this and keen to give it a try. Having finished it, I am unsure how to review it, as it is difficult to do so without giving away any spoilers and, of course, this I do not wish to do.

This is very much literary horror. It combines poetic, descriptive language, alongside the twists and turns that you expect from horror. However, Johnson is no Shirley Jackson, and you are always aware of the build up, so the expectation can cause the revealed twists to be a little anti-climatic.

The sisters of the title are the oddly named July and September – two sisters born just ten months apart. At the beginning of the novel they arrive at a house, ‘The Settle House,’ on the moors. Their mother disappears upstairs, leaving the sisters to fend to themselves. The reason for their mother’s removal is gradually revealed, as we learn that the girls left Oxford after an incident at school.

There were things I enjoyed about this novel; especially the beginning of the novel, where July and September begin to explore their surroundings, and we learn about the girls – their father, aunt, mother and, most importantly, their relationship. Close in age, the girls are almost like twins. However, as we get closer, we find that what, initially, seems a nurturing, loving, relationship has disturbing elements. Overall, I found this a creepy, disquieting novel, but it did not live up to my expectations.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

I am afraid I am in minority here. I did not like this book from the first sentence. I don’t understand what it is about the rave of Daisy Johnson’s prose. I just found it pretentious and very wishy-washy. There are so many words and sentence after sentence with unimportant stuff that you have to concentrate which sentence may be important for the plot. I felt like the author is throwing sand in my eyes so that I cannot see that she has nothing new to tell.

September and July are sisters. Only ten month apart, they have a very unhealthy relationship. Their mother is somehow not there. She is there physically but not mentally and so the sisters are living in their own world. I was wondering if there was something wrong with them, if they had some mental issues. The family is so weird and you get almost no real information. July is the main character and she seems to me like she was retarded in some way. But I am not sure. Something happens where there lived before they moved to this weird house where they live now. At the end there is this “twist” and we learn what happened and you can see this coming from afar and it really is not something new.

I just think that Daisy Johnson is not an author for me. I did not like her writing. I did not like the sisters and I did not like the story. I read this kind of story before and seen this kind of story before in a movie. There are a lot of books out there at the moment about unhealthy relationships between sisters. I think I need to stop reading them. It is just too much and they are repeating themselves.

Sisters, Daisy Johnson. 5/5

Something unspeakable has happened to sisters July & September. Desperate for a fresh start their mother Sheela moves them across the country to an old country house that has a troubled life of its own....
Noises come from behind the walls. Lights flicker of their own accord. Sleep feels impossible, dreams are endless. July finds the bond she forged in blood with September as kid begins to change.

I feel in love with Daisy Johnsons writing when I read Everything Under last year, getting the chance to read an ARC of Sisters thanks to #NetGalley, #RandomHouseUK and #DaisyJohnson is truly an honour.

Daisy Johnson is a searing, stunning, beautiful voice of a generation. Sisters is a haunting story, creeping under your skin, leaving a piece of itself behind.

I am fascinated with Johnsons use of language, I find her writing to be constantly poetic. Her study of character here is phenomenal, these women are cracked open onto this pages but with delicate observations.

Her ability to delve so deeply into relationships, sisterhood and motherhood and draw those together in this eerie gothic tale is excellent. This deserves awards. (As did Everything Under)

The intro and the finale, wow, and what a cover.

Darkly oppressive with a sinister current running throughout. I found this book unputdownable and devoured it in a single sitting.

I loved Daisy Johnson's writing style which really stood out for being so different to anything I've read in a long time.

I so wanted to like this book but just couldn't. It's not Shirly Jackson despite the publishers claim. It wasn't very unsettling and for once I guessed the twist very quickly. I didn't feel the tension the author wanted to created nor the dread as a time of change. There was just a bit of dark missing.

Well... this was a little different. And not in a bad way I hasten to add. Although not a long book page-count wise, there is a lot contained herein. It follows two sisters, July and September as they, along with their mother, move into an old family home. They are running away from something that isn't immediately explained but is hinted at being really bad. The mother is depressed and so the two girls have to pretty much take care of themselves and the book basically is the story of what happens next...
It's hard (impossible) to say any more about the plot as you really do need to discover the rest of it as the author intends you to. It's all a bit intertwined and interconnected and I do admit to getting a bit lost along the way but sometimes you just have to trust the unknown and believe that all will come good at the end and, you'll have to trust me when I say that it does in this case. Quite emotionally and a bit shocking but there you are!
It's beautifully written, quite descriptive and often lyrical in nature. All things that I usually don't really enjoy in a book. I prefer things to get on with themselves and this is not the case here. But, and this is important. It works. It has to be this way to work. It's that kind of story. It has to feel a bit mystical and confusing and wonderful and emotional for the story to develop, and the way the author has achieved this is perfect.
All that said, for me, as confusing as it was occasionally, I kinda thought I knew where we would eventually end up, even through all the obfuscation. It was like a cloudy pond had just started to clear and the picture was starting to develop. But I jumped ahead of the game a bit instead of waiting. That didn't spoil things for me though as it's not often I am cluelessy hit by a sucker punch.
Anyway... all in all, an interesting read that was a little different to my normal choice of book and which I am very glad I took a punt on. I think I'll have to check out her debut book now.
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

I didn’t get on well with Sisters. I found it a struggle and eventually became quite irritated by it.

It is impossible to give an outline of the plot without undesirable spoilers, so I won’t try. The book opens with a family arriving in an unwelcoming, quite isolated cottage in Yorkshire, having suffered some kind of serious incident in Oxford where the two girls, named July and September (really?) were at school. Much of the narration is by July, the younger sister who is plainly somewhat traumatised, but by what is not clear...and very little else happens for a long time. There’s lots of Oppressive Atmosphere and Hinting At Dark Things, told in a fractured voice which is intended to sound like a troubled girl, but which sounded to me like an author trying to be clever and actually being mannered and self-conscious.

Things do begin to happen slowly, and past events begin to emerge...and the Big Surprise at the end becomes fairly obvious quite early on. Add to this a lengthy passage from the point of view of the mother, giving a lot of history which, to me, added nothing and served only as a distraction and I began to skim. I reached the end with some relief.

A lot of people have liked Sisters, but I’m afraid I didn’t and can’t recommend it.

(My thanks to Vintage for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Dark and claustrophobic, gripping and lingers long in the mind, I devoured this in one sitting. Loved it