Review – A Sister’s Promise by Renita D’Silva

Two sisters. Bound by blood. Torn apart by love. 

My sister – the glue that held our family together and the gatekeeper to the memories of our shared childhood. 

The girl I made a pact with – to protect each other for life. The woman who destroyed my family, my future. And the only one who can save my daughter. 

Set against the dramatic backdrop of India, A Sister’s Promise is a powerful, emotional tale of family secrets, love and the ties that bind sisters together. 

A Sister’s Promise was published by one of my favourite publishers, Bookouture, on 2nd July in paperback and for kindle, and it’s the first time I’ve read a book by Renita D’Silva. I’m sure a lot of my regular readers will know how I love travelling to India: if you’re not lucky enough to be able to book a similar trip, this book will transport you there with its vividly drawn backdrop affecting and sometimes overloading all your senses (in the same lovely way that India itself can). The writing is quite beautiful – wonderful descriptions, metaphors and similes that make you gasp – very unusual and so easy to read. 

The story itself is wonderfully character driven, very emotional, beautifully told and totally absorbing – the story of two sisters who, for a number of reasons, find themselves taking very different paths through life. Relationships are at its centre – I loved Puja’s drawing together with her son Raj, Sharda’s love for daughter Kushi, and the beautifully described early relationship with her husband. The characters hit the page fully formed and totally believable and three dimensional – the good, the weak and the bad. The descriptions of cooking – central to the relationship story – give the story a depth of taste, smell and colour that I’ve rarely come across. 

This was a thoroughly beautiful read, with some very clear messages about love, loyalty and betrayal. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone who loves their books filled with emotion and likes their reading to uplift and transport them to a different world – I’m off to look at the other books by Renita D’Silva, hoping they’ll be just half as good as this one.

My thanks to netgalley and publishers Bookouture for my advance reading e-copy.

Renita D’Silva loves stories, both reading and creating them. Her short stories have been published in ‘The View from Here’, ‘Bartleby Snopes’, ‘this zine’, ‘Platinum Page’, ‘Paragraph Planet’ among others and have been nominated for the ‘Pushcart’ prize and the ‘Best of the Net’ anthology. She is the author of Monsoon Memories, The Forgotten Daughter, The Stolen Girl and A Sister’s Promise.

Renita has a Facebook author page, and spends almost as much time on Twitter as I do: she also has an excellent website.