Daisy Johnson’s Sisters mysterious, wrong-footing novel had me hooked. I loved how Johnson described the dark, grimy intimacy of the sisters’ relationship - love at its most complicated. There is at times an almost gothic feel to the story but the first person teenage narrator always rings true. Their mother takes hold of the story for a part of the novel, and although necessary for clarity, (because at times the dreamlike quality means you’re not quite sure where and when you are), she is definitely a minor player in the psychodrama of sisters July And September’s lives. Gripping and memorable.

Sisters is a beautifully written portrayal of two sisters and their dysfunctional relationship within their family. Johnson manages to write in a way that's lyrical with some exceptional turns of phrase, while still maintaining a story that keeps you turning the pages. The story is unsettling, engaging and makes for an excellent read.

September and July are two inseparable sisters, who have to move to another city with their mother. Sheela, after a horrible accident happens at school. The girls try to cope with life in the house where their deceased father was raised, trying to take care of themselves while their depressed mother needs a bit of time to get over what happened.
This was definitely a page turner! It was a bit spooky, but beautifully written and definitely one that you won't be able to put down!

Daisy Johnson follows her Booker Prize-shortlisted debut novel Everything Under with a short, sharp gothic psychological thriller that echoes Shirley Jackson and Stephen King, while feeling utterly unique.

Two teenage sisters - July and September - are taken to a remote tumbledown house by their fraught mother, escaping a terrible incident that is drip-fed slowly through the pages of the novel. The older September is a whirling dervish of energy, difficult and unrestrained, forcing her younger and meeker sister into increasingly precarious emotional and physical situations. The two are inseparable, and have an almost telepathic connection. As the weeks in the old house drag by, and their mother becomes more and more reclusive, their relationship reaches boiling point - and the house seems to take on a life of its own.

Johnson made a splash with her first collection of short stories - FEN - in 2017. Those stories - often terrifying portraits of women encountering, and being subsumed by, supernatural elements in rural England, feel like a precursor to SISTERS. Her poetic prose tangles around the increasingly dark themes of depression and co-dependence, keeping the reader on their toes as to what is real and what is imagined in the decaying house the three women find themselves hiding in. Past and present merge into one into one in some of the novel's best moments, but Johnson is clear-eyed and unsparing with her plotting and with the characters' journeys.

The examination of three damaged female characters is beautifully drawn - September is a truly terrifying character because she feels so rounded. July, whose eyes we see most of the novel through, is a young woman who has never really known anything other than a sister who controls her every thought, but begins to question whether that is all there is to life. And their mother, who seems to be suffering from depression, has a very humane backstory that unfurls over the course of the novel.

Creepy and strange - I guess the Shirley Jackson comparisons work. Although I knew where this book was heading, I did like it: I loved the prose; it was horribly unsettling and anxiety-inducing. Tight, compelling, fascinating.

- Nirica from Team Champaca

In the acknowledgments section at the end of the book, Daisy Johnson thanks her mother “for watching horror films she doesn’t really want to watch with [her]”. I am not surprised. Sisters is a horror story. Of course, given that Johnson is a Booker-shortlisted author, her latest novel will be admired by many readers who would not generally touch the genre with a barge pole. But make no mistake – it’s horror alright.

Sisters starts with that most Gothic of tropes – the haunted house. Sheela and her two teenage daughters July and September leave Oxford and arrive at a cottage in Yorkshire. The place is “rankled, bentoutashape, dirtyallover”. It’s creepy and unwelcoming (literally so… they cannot find the key supposedly hidden beneath a stone frog and the girls have to jump in through a window). Throughout the novel the house heaves and sighs as if alive, as if its walls and ceilings were pressing upon its new inhabitants. The house also has a habit of hijacking the thoughts of the characters. In one of the novel’s many surreal moments, July sees a bird force itself out of one of the house’s walls. Sheela, the mother, finds parallels between herself and the cottage:

She has always known that houses are bodies and that her body is a house in more ways than most. She had housed those beautiful daughters, hadn’t she, and she had housed depression all through her life like a smaller, weightier child… There are so many noises she cannot sleep. In the night, mostly, thumps and thundering, the sound of many footsteps, the crash of windows opening and closing, the crash of windows opening and closing, sudden explosions which sound like shouting… At times, awoken in the darkness, she things again about how that house is, more than any other, a body.

There are other horror tropes aplenty. For much of the novel, the first person narrator is July. It soon becomes clear that she has an unhealthily close relationship with her sister September, who is just ten months older than she is. They are inseparable in a manner which is at times touching and loving, but more often, than not, disturbing. The disorientating thought processes of July are challenging to follow, but suggest that she is in thrall to September, who has the stronger character of the two and a violent streak to go with it. We also realise that the family is blighted by mental health problems, violence and abuse. There are certain chapters of the novel which are presented in the third person from Sheela’s perspective. The narrative in these segments is clearer, and solves some of the many questions raised by July’s account. However, the mother’s explanations only serve to confirm the past episodes of rage and abuse which still cast a shadow over the family. The feeling of dread and terror is ever present. More importantly, the novel is underpinned by that niggling doubt which often characterises the best Gothic tales – is there any truth to the novel’s apparently supernatural or fantastical elements?

What is brilliant about Sisters is the way in which Johnson combines striking images and poetic language with horror and thriller elements to convey the ramblings of disturbed teenage minds. What is less impressive is the plot and the way it is handled. As the novel progresses, one cannot help suspecting that the author is holding back key details, in order to build up to a Night-Shyamalan-like twist and which does, eventually, arrive (that is why most reviews of the novel are peppered with *spoiler alerts*). Yet, the twist is underwhelming and not really worth the contrivances leading to the final revelation.

So, do read Sisters for the insightful characterizations, the great writing and for its original use of genre tropes. However, if its page-turning plots you're after, there are plenty of psychological thrillers that are probably better at providing thrills and chills.

I have hesitated over whether this reivew, despite the obligation to do so in return for having had access to the book. As someone who thinks that Johnson does have talent, I was keen to see for myself (prior to any publicity roll out) whether the second novel lived up to the the rapturous applause her work has generated. I’m afraid that for me, it simply didn’t.

Sisters is a novel that does generate some degree of atmosphere and has an element of surprise, but neither are carried off with conviction or any real authenticity. That for me is the central problem of this book: it is an exercise in style, rather than a story that fully explores the characters created.

I understand that in part this aloofness from the characters, and from the reader themselves, is the result of withholding information from the reader in service of the twist. But needing to keep something back doesn’t mean the author can’t make the narrator feel like a real person.

The big thing that prevents July ever feeling like a living, breathing teenage girl is down to the style. A style that tends towards confusion and abstraction, leaning on intangible similes, doesn’t help an author create a whole person. I also wonder whether the choice of first person narrative here also adds to this disconnect; the way this character speaks and thinks simply doesn’t sound like the person it’s saying it is. July doesn’t talk how teenagers talk; she talks how an adult woman feels she remembers teenagers talking and thinking. She doesn’t move through a world that is recognisable to those who know or work with teenagers. Having been a teenage girl myself, this novel gestured at some of those experiences but, only ever really on a surface level. What it does reflect is a bit like Skins, which is to say a bit hyperbolic and of the late 2000s.

July and September gesture at authenticity without ever truly inhabiting it. That’s not to say that relationships between teenage girls can’t be harsh or cruel or manipulative or violent, they absolutely can be. It’s also not to say that bullying of the sort described in this book does not occur; it does and schools aren’t always equipped to tackle the smaller, insidious stuff (though I think the incident in this case at any school would have resulted in more than a week’s suspension for the bullies.)

The issue is that the style makes it ring false because it can’t go deeper than this faint, broad sweep at girlish anxiety and snapping violence. It’s mood over action or clarity. A very small particular gripe for me personally is the way this lack of clarity also generates a weird disconnection in setting. The novel seems to suggest that the girls are in a normal state school but so much of the description hints at a largesse no state school I’ve ever experienced still has, not even when I was at school under New Labour. There’s no shame in offering some specificity here, as it would help ground the reader in the world of the book.

All the little gaps, inconsistencies and inaccuracies compound under the author’s unwillingness to be specific (except for reminding us quite regularly that they once lived in Oxford). The intangible, or infelicitous, imagery also gets in the way of offering real information to the reader. For instance: “tinged with ever-dying stars”, or my least favourite “nipples like upturned exclamation marks”. It sounds like it evokes something but it falls apart under the briefest scrutiny. The lack of of precision about language, relationships, places, times, feelings, all add to the reader being kept in the dark and not in a way that pays off.

This also contributes to the reader’s response to the twist. I’m sure for many readers it does come as a surprise, but that’s less to do with careful signalling and plotting and more to the lack of clarity in the novel. Even though I guessed the twist quite early as it is something of a cliche, the moment of the twist is so unclear that you have to check your understanding with little help from the author. The ending is just as rushed and irritatingly unspecific, with an unnecessary tangent that felt like filler.

For the record, I think there is a much better, more complex and ultimately more evocative novel buried under the style and approach of Sisters. The section from Sheela’s perspective, told through a third person narrative voice, was by far and away the most convincing and rewarding part of the novel. The description of depression in particular, while often falling into similar stylistic traps as the rest of the novel, felt at least real and considered. Sheela’s struggles are both internal and external: how to mother through confusion and in the wake of abuse; how to love the thing that has changed your life; how to live when your body doesn’t want to. This section doesn’t quite nail its colours to the mast but, what I’m trying to say is: this is the section that was both the most vivid and the most readable. Part of me wishes for a novel built around Sheela instead, that would perhaps be enabled to feel both authentic but grounded.

More than anything this book is a frustration because it has good enough bones and a talent behind it that might make it work. But as it stands, I’m sad that it doesn’t. I'm glad I was able to read it ahead of the curve and really make my own mind up so thank you again to the publisher but, this was a disappointing read.

A difficult book for me to rate simply because the style of prose used (best described as lyrical) is not to my liking, and I can see tha many reviewers loved it. July and September have moved with their mum Sheela to an old family home once deserted now with new occupants, all hoping for a fresh start. However “Settle House” appears to have its own agenda, an unsettling place to live with its ghostly noises and hidden places. Two young, barely teenage, girls face an uncertain future. September is the controlling sister always seeking attention and July often feels inadequate in her shadow. Little support is forthcoming from Sheela lost in a fog of despair, with no partner, finding comfort in the arms of passing strangers. A short read, with a brutal ending, from a young and very talented author. Many thanks to the good people at netgalley for a gratis copy in exchange for an honest review and that is what I have written.

This is the first Daisy Johnson book I’ve read and she has a really wonderful way with words. Her writing style is very poetic and different from anything I’ve read before.

This book follows two sisters July and September who are 10 months apart in age. I felt like I was in a trance reading this book and their bizarre relationship. It was really captivating but I also felt a little confused at the end of it. I’m not sure if what I think happened actually happened!

I really love the cover of the book and the unusual writing style.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing an ecopy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Oh my god this book is so good!

Do I need to write anything more? Probably!

I loved Everything Under by Daisy Johnson and the tautness, the lyricism, the ambiguity, the mythic nature of her writing and this is all back here in Sisters, exploring the sisterly bond between the characters July and September. Close - perhaps too close, cloying and dependent - that bond is stretched and contorted when they move into a new home following a tragic event in Oxford (no more details, read the book!)

That home oozes tension and threat - a gothic, isolated intense setting (possibly not best to read during lockdown!) and the tension ramps up wonderfully.

This is a novel which shifts under our feet, making us re-evaluate the beginning as we approach the (extraordinarily good) ending.

If anything, I would rate this book higher than Everything Under, more assured, more confident somehow. And if I could I would give it more than 5 stars!

I hadn't read such a disturbingly powerful novel for a very long time. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks is the closest that comes to mind. What's going on? was the question endlessly recurring in my head while I was reading it. Sisters is cruel. It's unsettling. It's ruthless. But it is also permeated with unconditional love and fierce poetry.

“This the year something else is the terror.”

Ooh, this is an interesting one; one very much for the gothic lovers amongst us and those that crave psychological suspense. It doesn’t surprise me that this novel from Daisy – the first that I have read of this much-heralded new writer – has been compared to the likes of Shirley Jackson and Daphne du Maurier.

Perhaps that’s a rather heady comparison (Daphne and Shirley were masters of this craft, after all) but Sisters is certainly a story that looks to conjure up that same blur of reality and magical realism, and a sense of the otherworldly.

The sisters the novel speaks of are September and July – September being the elder one by 10 months – two teenage girls who have been suddenly pulled out of school following an (unspecified) accident and whisked away by the mother to a cottage from their youth, one that belongs to their aunt, for rest and recuperation.

The girls’ mother, it seems, is appalled and distraught, communicating little with her girls; the girls, it seems, are rather left to themselves to sort things out between them. But theirs is a dark, toxic sisterly bond and soon their relationship spirals into dangerous and even deadly territory…

“September was the ringleader but July was the one who suffered.”

What emerges in Daisy’s writing are two key elements that I really responded to: the sick, symbiotic relationship between the sisters. There is psychological bullying, yes, but also manipulation and an eerie form of syncopation and mutuality between the girls:

“There is something leaving me and I realise with a shock it is my virginity. Going, going, gone. Taken in a second-hand way. September is having sex and – because really two means one – I am having sex too. I close my eyes, ball my fists into the sand.”

There is no doubt that the development and representation of this sisterhood is a critical success in the book, but I also loved the way Daisy was able to develop the cottage itself as a living organism, as if that too was part of the ebb and flow of the dynamic of the three women who lived inside it. It is THIS element that brings in the comparison with the masters because this world creation was what set Shirley and Daphne above everyone else, as if the worlds they created were too involved in the gothic webs they weaved:

“She has always known that houses are bodies and that her body is a house in more ways than most. She had housed those beautiful daughters, hadn’t she, and she had housed depression all through her life like a smaller, weightier child.”

This weaving of women’s bodies, sex, sisterhood with the physical world reminded me a lot of surrealist works by the likes of Dorothea Tanning and Frida Kahlo. Intriguing and a novel that stands out in its originality in comparison with other publications this year.

Beautifully written in the first person perspectives of Sheela and July. Something awful has happened to September and July back in Oxford which has forced their move to an isolated cottage somewhere near Whitby. Daisy Johnson weaves this story gently sucking the reader in. The reader knows they're going to find out the awful thing that happened but I didn't want to. I just wanted the book to carry on without shattering the illusions that the author was building. A lovely read, very different to what I was expecting, but brilliant just the same.

Sisters is a taut gothic novella about close sisters September and July who escape to the North York Moors after of an incident of school bullying spirals out of control.

There are echoes of Shirley Jackson and Susan Hill here, and plenty of gothic conventions at play. While this does make the plot pretty predictable, it also allows Johnson's writing to really sing. The prose is freefalling, chaotic, relentlessly building a haunting and unstable atmosphere. It's an intensely claustrophobic read, tightly wound round the question of what happened to July? - the kind of book which makes you feel as if you have been caught in the eye of a storm.

Sisters is an atmsopheric and spellbinding take on a traditional gothic theme.

Daisy Johnson's stunning second novel tells the story of two sisters, July and September, born just ten months apart. Understandably, they are inseparable, with the elder sister being completely domineering over the younger. They live with their mother, who suffers from bouts of depression and who, as a result, sometimes struggles to care for her daughters. When July's school bullies take things too far, September steps in to make sure they get their comeuppance. What happens next means they have to move to Settle House in North Yorkshire.

The writing in Sisters is stunning and compelling. It does switch between narrators but both are equally as interesting and clearly distinguished.

It's difficult to review this title without giving too much away but Daisy Johnson has done an excellent job of bringing a family to life and exploring an intense relationship between two sisters. The ultimate ending was excellent, heartbeaking and unexpected.

Many thanks to Vintage UK for the chance to read and review this book.

Sisters is an intense and unsettling read which deserves to be one of the biggest books of 2020. A compelling look at the twisted relationship of sisters July and September, and the run-down house they move into with their mother when their life back in Oxford falls apart. A brutal, haunting novel in the most brilliant way.

This tells the story of sisters, July and September. July is 10 months younger than September but they do everything together and are inseparable. Their mother is a distant character who they have little contact with even though they live with her. September is the more dominant sister and makes July do things that she doesn't really want to do. September has quite a cruel streak to her and often forces July to hurt herself as part of the games that they play, yet July would go to the ends of the earth for September. Overriding this closeness is an event that happened at school that has bought the girls and their mum to the Settle house, a desolate, unloved, bleak home owned by their Aunt Ursa and rented to them.

I can't say much more as it will spoil the story, but what I will say is that the end twist I was only just about ahead of, and even then it had only been a passing thought. The writing style I found tricky to get my head around to start with as it consisted of short sentences that felt disjointed but I see it was a deliberate writing choice to demonstrate how the characters feel. The elements of gothic fiction in this novel are everywhere and at times I felt like I was reading Du Maurier's 'Rebecca' - all the elements are there .

Once I got hooked into this book I didn't stop reading it and couldn't put it down - it's the first book I have finished in two days in years! Enjoy!!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I thought Daisy Johnson's last novel, Everything Under should have won the Booker Prize, so I was very much looking forward to reading 'Sisters'. Thankfully, it did not let me down. What was odd was that prior to reading this I had just finished Polly Crosby's - The Illustrated Child . There is a lot of similarity in the books both in themes and set up – both have parents who are artists who have including their children in their books, both feature one parent escaping to the country with the children; and both are not as straightforward as you might think.

And, that is the problem with trying to review either book. It is hard to say much about what happens in the books without spoiling them. Sisters is, at its heart, a book about just that – sisters. It is about sibling rivalry, envy, love, jealousy and about a childhood promise forged between them. It also touches on grief, mental illness and much more.

Sisters doesn't quite have a lyrical splendour of Everything Under, but still marks Johnson as one f the best young writers out there at this moment in time.

I received an ARC from Netgalley for review.

Daisy Johnson is a truly remarkable writer, and ‘Sisters’ is a short, sharp shock to the system.
The phrase ‘genre-defying’ is bandied about a lot these days, but Johnson’s writing to me really is impossible to define.
In ‘Sisters’ July and September (separated in age by less than a year) have moved with their writer mother from their home in Oxford to the ramshackle Yorkshire house where September was born, following an incident at school. As their mother retreats into the darkness of her room, the sisters are left to fend for themselves. As their relationship becomes ever more entwined and complicated, a shocking truth about the past is revealed, and their future is thrown into disarray.
Johnson has a unique and startling writing style which I can imagine some people struggling with but which I find incredibly effective. She is excellent at depicting the difficult relationship between the sisters- I was reminded at times of the titular ‘Twins’ in Marcy Dermansky’s excellent book as well as the sisters in Audrey Niffenegger’s less enjoyable ‘Her Fearful Symmetry.’
I haven’t yet read Johnson’s previous works, but I am going to order them ASAP following ‘Sisters.’ A haunting, unsettling dark fairytale that will stay with me for a long time!
Thank you to Random House and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review

This is a tricky book to review. There's no denying that Daisy Johnson's writing is masterful. Her intricate prose flows beautifully, and this is a dark, menacing book which comes through in the writing incredibly well. The prose is dream-like, really, and nightmarish a lot of the time, and I'm not sure that reading was a truly enjoyable experience, but I would still recommend the book to anyone interested in inventive writing styles.