Eloise Parrish is the picture of sunshine and optimism while her sister Oli is “shadows and hesitation, with a hard shell” (3). The duo are avid birders, and their favorite place is the Braided Woods in Connecticut. Because their parents died when the girls were quite young, they live with their grandmother Ida Gibson who is faced with the challenge of Alzheimer’s. The pair jokingly call themselves The Sisters With Too Much Responsibility.
In September, Oli will be a junior, and Eloise would have been one year behind, but she shockingly is found dead in a shallow grave in the Braided Woods. Although the case has gone cold, Oli will not give up on finding her sister’s killer. Because she is “constantly trying to put this huge, terrible puzzle together” (7), Oli realizes she wishes to pursue a career as a detective when she graduates from high school.
This is the basic plot of Luanne Rice’s novel If Anything Happens to Me. With its twists and mystery, it would make an ideal plot for an episode of Criminal Minds.
On June 9 while visiting her sister’s death site, Oli hears the voice of what she believes is her sister. What she discovers is way more sinister, and she finds herself digging the dirt away from a second girl: Iris, who appears to be a victim of a serial killer. But Iris is still alive!
Iris also has a younger sister, Hayley, whom Iris is determined to rescue. However, her memory is foggy—from drugs and her captor’s experiments, and she swears that her sister’s life depends on no police involvement. Understanding the sister bond and believing the two cases are connected, Oli vows to help Iris. Soon, the two teen detectives are searching for life-and-death answers.
Their search brings them into contact with another family’s history: the Sibylline Sisters, whose lineage can be traced not only to the oracles: Athena, Daphne, and Circe, but to Alse Young. A botanist from Windsor, Connecticut, Alse was the first girl executed for witchcraft in America.
As the two search for and begin to uncover answers, they discover another sibling pair with a younger sister and wonder: What does sibling love allow?
This is an intriguing novel that shares the magic of sisters and well as the mystery of the human mind and its psychopathy. It also unearths the power of writing. Rice notes: “Writing can make us feel, make us look at what we have, at what matters more than anything” (302). Writing is also a way to preserve memories and to memorialize special people.
- Donna