Not the last book in the series, as you'd believe. It is, however, the last book she completed and saw published in her lifetime. There is another book, completed by her son and using information that she left, but that is, quite literally, another story.
This is the story of the Seventh missing sister in the D'Apeliese family. Please excuse any mistakes I make on spelling. The fact I was listening to audio books means that I don't actually know how certain names are spelt.
Each book has told the story of the six sisters adopted by Pa Salt as they discover their birth families and how and why they came to be adopted. Each one has discovered at least one blood relative. Slightly annoyingly, each of them has ended up in a romantic relationship as well, making all the stories too predictable and a bit cheesy. The exception up until now has been Ally, who was already with the love of her life at the start and lost him as part of her story.
At the end of the last book, Pa Salt's lawyer declared that they had found the Missing Sister.
What I liked about this one was the fact that it really did bring all the sisters together. It wasn't about their individual stories, it was about what they'd done since discovering more about themselves and all of them working together to solve the mystery.
They have a picture of a ring and a location in New Zealand to work with. The story flits between various narrators. The six sister's we've already met, Mary-Kate, the possible seventh sister, her mother Mary who is known as Merry, and some historical figures.
I felt it was almost too obvious for Mary Kate to be the missing sister and the fact that there's so much focus on her mother and her story, indicates that there's more to the whole thing that the others believe. The story moves around because, although the ring has been passed down to Mary Kate, it is Merry who actually has it with her as she goes on a world trip. Merry also has a past and there's clearly a lot of things that she's not telling her family.
The historical bit is mostly about a woman called Nula. Shamefully, my Irish history is extremely poor and I can't actually remember the year or years that were stated in Nula's diary. I do know that it takes place some time after the First World War, or the Great War as it was called then and it talks a lot about the repercussions of that war. It essentially caused civil war and armed rebellions. I'm not entirely ignorant of this, as I did it as a subject in my final year at school, except we mostly covered the later years of the conflict. It is largely down to religion and opposition between Catholic and Protestants and there was a lot of hatred in Ireland for the English. Or anyone in Britain, generally.
What's interesting is the way that whilst Nula is firmly supportive of her Irish family and husband, she also learns that not all the English are bad people. She finds a new friend, I think because she sees him simply as a human being who was deeply affected by horrors he witnessed and hoped there would never be something like that again. Nula's story is not a happy one and part of it is told through her diary and the rest through her granddaughter.
What did I think? There was almost too much going on. A lot of characters, locations, secrets. I just wanted answers really and I wonder if maybe this book, like the previous one, was too long. Whilst I enjoyed the sisters all coming together and working as one across the globe, as well as finding out what they've all been up to, I was frustrated by the stopping and starting and wished the whole thing would just get to the point.
However, I'm impatient. I always want answers quickly. If it was a paper book, I'd probably have read ahead. And regretted it immediately.
I definitely look forward to the final book, where everything will come together.
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