SECOND SISTER BY CHAN-HO-KEI
Hardback published by Head of Zeus
GOSSIP. RUMOUR. REVENGE.
Nga-Yee, a librarian, lives a quiet life with her fifteen-year-old sister Siu-Man. After a difficult, impoverished upbringing and the deaths of their parents, they are finally finished finding a bit of stability. Then one day, Nga-Yee comes home to find her sister has jumped to her death from their twenty-second floor window.
Was it really suicide, or was she pushed? And does it have anything to do with a recent trip to Hong Kong subway which left Siu-Man silent and withdrawn? Nga-Yee cannot rest until she knows the truth even if that means tracking down her sister’s friends one by one and making them confess.
MY REVIEW
Second Sister is Chan-Ho-kei best novel yet. I loved every page. I read Borrowed and enjoyed that, but Second Sister had an immediate impact on me with an opening of suspense, that I couldn’t put the book down. Second Sister is is just the type of book that made me enjoy it all as its full of suspense, Gossip, rumour and revenge.
Nga-Yee has looked after her younger sister Siu-Man, since the death of their parents. When Nga-Yee left her flat at eight in the morning, she had no idea her whole life would change that day. When Nga-Yee returns back to their building, Wun Wah House and sees a police car and people gathering around a patch of concrete near to the main entrance a teenage girl in school uniform lay on the floor. Her little sister, Siu-Man has jumped from their twenty-second floor apartment. The police had ruled that Siu-Man jumped to her death. Naturally Nga-Yee wants answers, she doesn’t believe that her sister would take her own life, and calls upon a private investigator.
The Second Sister is certainly a must read for mystery fans there’s so much packed into this story, its part a detective novel, part a revenge thriller, it also explores themes of sexual harassment and Internet bullying and teenage suicide. It also captures the zeitgeist of Hong Kong today.
MY THANKS TO
I would like to thank Bei @midaspr and @Hoz_Books for sending me Second Sister to read, review and for inviting me to be part of the blog tour today.
ABOUT AUTHOR CHAN-HO-KEI
Find Chan Ho Kei on Twitter @Chan_HoKei
Chan Ho-Kei 陳浩基 was born and raised in Hong Kong. He has worked as software engineer, scriptwriter, game designer and editor of comic magazines. His writing career started in 2008 at the age of thirty-three, with the short story ‘The Case of Jack and the Beanstalk,’ which was shortlisted for the Mystery Writers of Taiwan Award. He went on to win the award again the following year with ‘The Locked Room of Bluebeard.’
In 2011, Chan’s first novel, THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD, won the biggest mystery prize in the Chinese-speaking world, the Soji Shimada Mystery Award, and has subsequently been published in Taiwan (Crown), China (New Star), Japan (Bungeishunju), Thailand (Nanmee) and Italy (Metropoli d’Asia)
Jeremy Tiang’s novel State of Emergency won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018. He has translated more than ten books from Chinese, including Chan Ho-Kei’s The Borrowed, and also writes and translates plays. He lives in Brooklyn.
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