What Happened to My Sister

In this companion piece to Me and Emma, nine-year-old Carrie and her alcoholic mother flee their small town after Carrie shoots her abusive stepfather dead. At a motel, Carrie’s mother gets drunk and entertains strangers, leaving Carrie to fend for herself. On one of her foraging trips, Carrie befriends a girl named Cricket, whose mother, Honor, sees in Carrie an eerie resemblance to her dead daughter and comes to wonder why she never meets Carrie’s mother. Carrie herself is puzzled by memories of her younger sister, Emma; she believes that Emma disappeared, but her mother swears Emma is a figment of Carrie’s imagination. As Honor and Cricket take more of an interest in Carrie’s life, the precarious web of deception that has been built around her comes under threat. While Carrie’s abuse is distressing, readers will be more troubled by choices Flock has made in telling her story. Carrie as narrator has the expected limited perspective of a child and a by-the-book colloquial voice; she petitions the reader’s sympathy too soon and fails to ever come to life. Ham-fisted coincidences, broad caricatures, and awkward plot twists don’t help. Agent: Susanna Einstein, Einstein Thompson Literary Agency. (Aug.)