The Missing Sister: Lucinda Riley (The Seven Sisters, 7)

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Alongside the Seven Sisters series, she wrote novels such as Hothouse Flower (2010, also titled The Orchid House), The Girl on the Cliff (2011), The Midnight Rose (2013), The Angel Tree (2014) and The Butterfly Room (2019). She worries about things she can't change but as answers come within touching distance I was urging her on.

Lily pointed out and didn’t add about Sirius almost getting Severus killed, “anyway, we are almost there. Because—” because she’s scared she will die tomorrow; because she loved James so much that the idea of losing him terrified her; because she wanted to at least pretend that things could still be good even in times like these; because she wanted to feel happiness again. Beautifully written and wonderfully atmospheric, Dinah Jefferies skilfully captures this fragile moment of history in a complex and thrilling tale. As the series follows each sister as they delve into their ancestry, readers believe that Pa Salt is a ‘hidden’ character in the books.The book is well-written—beautifully written in spots—and the author's descriptions of Rangoon and the surrounding countryside delighted me. This quest makes up the backbone of the story and the sense of mystery, secrecy and intrigue is evident from the very beginning. Each of the sisters is brought from legend to the modern world: Maia the nurturer, Ally the adventurer, Star the dreamer, CeCe the artist, Tiggy the spiritual one and Electra the rebel.

To the surprise of everyone, it is the missing sister who Pa Salt has chosen to entrust with the clue to their pasts. Now Belle finds herself picking up the pieces of the mystery and finds support and encouragement in the form of Oliver, a journalist mooted to be always on the look out for a good scoop. Among his papers she found an old newspaper clipping which told of a baby’s disappearance from her pram in her parent’s garden in Rangoon.For years, fans of Lucinda Riley’s The Seven Sisters series have debated who the seventh sister might be, and who Pa Salt really is. Belle’s anguish and fear had become my own … One of my favourite scenes has to be the hot air balloon ride – not just for the things that I saw but the effect it had on Belle. In doing so, they will slowly unearth a story of love, strength and sacrifice that began almost one hundred years ago, as other brave young women risked everything to change the world around them . This is a fairly loosely woven story with some scenes that are a little hard to credit but which nevertheless takes you into the heart of what I imagine Burma could well have been like. Gloria the woman Belle meets on the boat on the way over and who seems to slot herself into Belle's life at every opportunity came across to me as if she was trying to be the mother figure but then on the other hand I was wary of her as I was of most people who featured.

The guns piled high on the hall table when the rubber planters came into town for a party, the colour and noise of Chinatown, the houses on stilts, and the lizards that left their tails behind. J'ai une fois de plus été subjuguée par la plume de Dinah Jefferies qui nous propose avec La disparue de Birmanie une histoire prenante où nous allons suivre le combat d'une femme pour retrouver sa soeur disparue.There were parts of the story set in Cheltenham with Diana’s story which worked well too, but it was Burma that really captivated me.