Book Review- Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce

Title: Sisters Red

Author: Jackson Pearce

Series: Sisters Red #1

Published:  June 2010

Length: 324 pages

Warnings: gore (quite a bit at one point), werewolves, sex references, kissing, profanity, a lot of violence, hatchets and knives

Other info: The second book, Sweetly, is expected to be published later this year. Jackson Pearce’s website is here and you can find her on facebook too.

Summary  from Goodreads: Scarlett March lives to hunt the Fenris--the werewolves that took her eye when she was defending her sister Rosie from a brutal attack. Armed with a razor-sharp hatchet and blood-red cloak, Scarlett is an expert at luring and slaying the wolves. She's determined to protect other young girls from a grisly death, and her raging heart will not rest until every single wolf is dead.

Rosie March once felt her bond with her sister was unbreakable. Owing Scarlett her life, Rosie hunts ferociously alongside her. But even as more girls' bodies pile up in the city and the Fenris seem to be gaining power, Rosie dreams of a life beyond the wolves. She finds herself drawn to Silas, a young woodsman who is deadly with an ax and Scarlett's only friend--but does loving him mean betraying her sister and all that they've worked for?

Review: For me, you could split this book into two parts: the extremely hard to get into bit (the beginning), and the fast paced interesting bit (the end). It starts with a wolf attacking a house, ending in the death of a grandmother and a young girl, Scarlett being forced to fight said wolf (known as a Fenris) as younger sister Rosie hides. Seven years later, Scarlett and Rosie are still living at that cottage, and have been training themselves to be able to hunt Fenris, which they do very well. All that seems to happen is they go after a couple of Fenris, get snarled at, kill the Fenris and move on. oh, and we meet Silas, Scarlett’s hunting partner that Rosie falls in love with. Why was this part boring? I’m not entirely sure, but this world just seemed hard to imagine and not very engaging. I was seriously thinking about giving up, but the second one in the series looks good, so I made myself read on. and I'm glad I did because about halfway through, it really picks up.

On Silas’s advice, Rosie tries things completely unrelated to hunting and ends up falling in love with him. Scarlett is just Scarlett, trying to get her sister, her partner and herself to be as good at hunting as they can get. And the Fenris start looking for a new recruit: the Potential, and will continue to murder human girls whilst they hunt for him. Obviously, our little team of heroes have to go and find the Potential, because letting your enemies build their numbers is a bad idea, but it really doesn’t help that they don’t have any idea where to start.

I don’t know how Jackson Pearce did it, but the second half was much more interesting and engaging. I think its because she started to make changes in the different relationships, by getting Rosie to do something completely different, creating something new in the relationship[ between Rosie and Scarlett.

The other significant relationship is that between Silas and Rosie, which of course is romantic. In Sisters Red, I didn’t really mind the romance, probably because it a)drives the plot of the second half and if there was no romance the second half would not be nearly so interesting and b) it adds something else to Rosie’s and Scarlett’s relationship.

The thing I like best in Sisters Red is the relationship between Rosie and Scarlett. It goes from two sisters who do everything together to two sisters who know what they want to do to two sisters in an argument to two sisters who know exactly where they stand in the world.  Its very interesting to watch and very realistic.

In my opinion Silas was fairly boring. All he really did was kill a few Fenris and convince Rosie to do something different to hunting. Oh and—actually won’t talk here because that would spoil it.

The fact that (above spoiler is so) was pretty obvious when Silas first mentioned his sibling. I want entirely sure how it would work,  but it was quite easy to guess which slightly spoiled the story for me, because I don’t like things that are too obvious . Oh well.

I especially like the double narration that continues throughout out most of the book.  It gives both Scarlett’s and Rosie’s views and completely different voices. We learn a lot about the March Sisters, more I think than we would have learnt if we saw it just from one of the sister’s or a third person point of view.  This especially worked after the argument, when we saw both the separate views on it  and how they deal with it in different ways. The separate voices and the easy switch between both points of view adds a lot to both the sisters.

Overall:  Strength 3 tea to Sisters Red, a story for anyone who likes werewolves, romance, strong heroines and family relationships.