Review: Sister, Sister by Andrew Neiderman

I picked this up randomly at a secondhand store for three dollars while I was away in the Blue Mountains. I had just finished reading Floundering and I needed something that wouldn’t hurt my head. A trashy horror novel about telepathic conjoined twins by V.C. Andrews’ ghostwriter seemed like just the thing. Also did I mention it was three dollars?

Anyway, to some extent I did enjoy it in a so-bad-it’s-kinda-good way, but I wouldn’t exactly recommend it to anyone. Because it was really, really bad. Sure, it was still pretty entertaining to start with, but by the end of the book I found myself just getting irritated. The dialogue was so forced and silly, and the plot was predictable and unfortunately not very scary. If you’ve read any V.C. Andrews, you’ll recognise the writing style from a plantation away. Except instead of incest, there’s conjoined twins who can hear each other’s thoughts and move things with their minds.

Which brings me to the worst part of this book: it is so incredibly offensive. The treatment of conjoined twins and kids with birth defects as freaks and monsters was absolutely appalling. Meanwhile, the main character is a macho douche, yet his supposedly intelligent co-worker, a female psychologist, treats him like he’s some sort of god. He, on the other hand, is completely condescending to her, like “oh, you’re so cute, with your degree and individual thoughts and no wedding ring, how novel!” Ugh. They have sex once and are talking marriage, because of course you can’t have sex unless you’re going to spend the rest of your life with that person. Oh, um, spoiler, I guess. Except it’s not really a spoiler because you can totally tell it’s going to happen from the moment he skeezily looks her up and down the first time they meet. Also I don’t really care about spoilers because I don’t think anyone should read this book.

Seriously, don’t read this book. Just don’t. It got to the point where it was more crap than craptastic. Which is a shame. But if you have any recommendations for trashy horror novels that won’t drive me completely nuts, I’d love to hear them!

Rating: 2/5 stars