The Shadow Sister (The Seven Sisters, 3)

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Lucinda Riley was born in 1965 in Ireland and, after an early career as an actress in film, theatre and television, wrote her first novel aged twenty-four. Her books have been translated into thirty-seven languages and continue to strike an emotional chord with cultures all around the world. The Seven Sisters series specifically has become a global phenomenon, creating its own genre. Perhaps I’d ask Ma if she knew anything more, but I was aware that discretion was her middle name when it came to spreading gossip among us sisters.

At home, in an attempt to communicate with me, Ma had taught me the basics of French sign language. Star D’Aplièse is at a crossroads in her life after the sudden death of her father, the elusive billionaire, Pa Salt, who adopted Star and her five sisters. After his death he left each sister a clue and a set of co-ordinates to their heritage. Star, keen to step out of the shadow of her sister, CeCe, starts her search and is lead to an antiquarian book shop in London. She has words there, she just prefers not to use them,” the therapist had explained. “She will when she’s ready.” As I travel round the world, following in the footsteps of my factual and fictional female characters to research their stories, I am constantly humbled and awed by the tenacity and courage of the generations of women who came before me. Whether fighting the sexual and racial prejudices of times gone by, losing their loved ones to the devastation of war or disease, or making a new life on the other side of the world, these women paved the way for us to have the freedom of thought and deed that we enjoy today. And so often take for granted. Star D'Aplièse, in her late twenties, is at a crossroads in her life after the sudden death of her beloved father – the elusive billionaire, named Pa Salt by his six daughters, all adopted by him from the four corners of the world. He has left each of them a clue to their true heritage, but Star – the most enigmatic of the sisters – is hesitant to step out of the safety of the close relationship she shares with her sister CeCe. In desperation, she decides to follow the first clue she has been left, which leads her to an antiquarian bookshop in London, and the start of a whole new world . . .

The silent one who must find her voice – set in London and Edwardian England, featuring Royal scandals and Beatrix Potter in the beautiful Lake District. She looks like you, Star,” five-year-old CeCe had said as we’d stared at the pictures in the storybook. “Perhaps you’re a princess too—you’re pretty enough to be one, with your golden hair and blue eyes. So, I will call you ‘Sia.’ And it goes perfectly with ‘Cee’! Cee and Sia—the twins!” She’d clapped her hands in delight. I realized I had been seated exactly where I was now when CeCe had come into our miserable little sitting room to tell me that Pa Salt was dead.

There are snippets of the Beatrix Potter story woven into Flora’s – their meeting and love of animals, a special letter and a friendship which would last for ever. The story here weaves throughout and much of what happens later is due to events in the Cumbrian hills. Kent The mystery of Pa Salt continues, and I feel I gained no information on that front, but I was still really pleased with this one, so much so that I went straight into the fourth (as I mentioned above). A hundred years earlier Flora McNichol leads a happy life in the Lake District looking after her animals and being outdoors and living near her idol Beatrix Potter. When circumstances change she is thrown into London Society and the home of one of London’s most notorious players, Alice Keppel, Flora finds herself a pawn in a game that she has no control over. As the truth comes out, Flora finds answers to questions she has been asking her whole life. So whenever you want or need something,” she’d said to me, “you can use it to tell me how you feel. And this is how I feel about you right now.” She’d pointed at herself, crossed her palms over her heart, then pointed at me. “I—love—you.” I literally got lost in this book, it took my imagination away to London through the ages, to the farm and fields of Beatrix Potters domain, and an old but loved house in the countryside of the now as well as the secrets from the past that it is keeping. The characters were endearing and unique, as was the story told around them. The author has such skill to be able to weave everything together so seamlessly that you almost feel that everything you have been witness to be the truth. I loved seeing Star gain some confidence and step away from the loving but ultimately stifling relationship that she and CeCe had fallen into.I will always remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard that my father had died . . .” CeCe went to the kitchen and I heard the whoosh of the tap being turned on full blast, knowing that the water had most likely spattered all over the worktops I had painstakingly wiped down earlier.

Following on from the bestselling The Seven Sisters and The Storm Sister, The Shadow Sister is the third book in Lucinda Riley's spellbinding series, loosely based on the mythology of the Seven Sisters star cluster. So I’d waited in reception while she went in to see him. When she’d emerged, I could see that she was tense and excited. This bridge is named after Queen Victoria’s husband,” I told her out of habit. “And there’s a memorial to him in Kensington—” Leicht schwächer als die ersten beiden Bücher aber trotzdem fesselnd und wieder ein schönes Leseerlebnis. Just because . . . I . . . would. That is, I want to sit in the garden I helped Pa Salt make and open my letter.”

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I sensed a layer of frost descending, but I would not give in to her this time. “I’m going to bed. I have a really bad headache,” I said. In legend, she is always accompanied by her sister Celaeno, who is stronger and louder than her. Their close relationship really fascinated me as, squashed into the middle of their six-sister family, Star and CeCe are forced into co-dependency and develop their own special relationship.

Another of your ‘real life’ characters in The Shadow Sister is the children’s author and illustrator, Beatrix Potter. Why do you think her work’s popularity has been so enduring – and did you read the tales to your children? When I first had the idea of writing a series of books based on The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades, I had no idea where it would lead me. I was very attracted to the fact that each one of the mythological sisters was, according to their legends, a unique and strong female. Some say they were the Seven Mothers who seeded our earth – there is no doubt that, in their stories, they were all highly fertile! – and had many children with the various Gods who were fascinated by their strength, beauty and ethereal air of mysticism. A hundred years earlier, headstrong and independent Flora MacNichol vows she will never marry. She is happy in her home in England’s picturesque Lake District—just a stone’s throw away from her childhood idol, Beatrix Potter. But when circumstances carry her to London, and into the home of one of Edwardian England’s most notorious society hostesses, Alice Keppel, she finds herself a pawn in a larger game; forced to choose between passionate love and duty to her family. That is, until a meeting with a mysterious gentleman reveals answers Flora has been searching for… Lucinda Riley continues her Seven Sisters series with this, the third installment. Star is the quiet sister, the one who always lived in CeCe's shadow, letting her talk for her and make all of her decisions. But now everything has changed. Pa Salt is dead and Star needs to become her own person and figure out who she is. She’d been on me ever since we’d been given the envelopes. She had torn hers open almost immediately afterward, expecting me to do the same.

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As for Flora, I loved her story, character and how Alice Keppel and her daughters were portrayed in this novel, now that's an interesting family! I think the Keppel family line is the line that produces the kings and princes of England mistresses, what a weird family, the woman in this line are experts in catching the eyes (and the hearts) of royalty! Do you think it was a mistake that Archie and Flora didn’t inform Teddy earlier about his true heritage? A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact. Though she brought up her four children mostly in Norfolk in England, in 2015 she fulfilled her dream of buying a remote farmhouse in West Cork, Ireland, which she always felt was her spiritual home, and indeed this was where her last five books were written. Star D’Aplièse is at a crossroads in her life after the sudden death of her beloved father—the elusive billionaire, affectionately called Pa Salt by his six daughters, all adopted from across the four corners of the world. He has left each of them a clue to her true heritage, and Star nervously decides to follow hers, which leads her to an antiquarian bookshop in London, and the start of a whole new world.