Spotlight/Q&A: The Sisters by Claire Douglas

About the Book

Genre: Psychological Thriller
Publisher: HarperCollins
Release Date: May 31, 2016

Synopsis from Goodreads...

One lied. One died. 

When one sister dies, the other must go to desperate lengths to survive. Haunted by her twin sister's death, Abi is making a fresh start in Bath. But when she meets twins Bea and Ben, she is quickly drawn into their privileged and unsettling circle. 

When one sister lies, she must protect her secret at all costs. As Abi tries to keep up with the demands of her fickle friends, strange things start to happen - precious letters go missing and threatening messages are left in her room. Is this the work of the beautiful and capricious Bea? Or is Abi willing to go to any lengths to get attention? When the truth outs, will either sister survive?

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Author Q&A

1. Who is the greatest influence in your writing career?

Claire: Ooh that’s a hard one but I think my love of writing began after reading all those Enid Blyton books as a child, I devoured the St Clare’s and Mallory Towers series as well as The Famous Five and The Secret Seven. I also enjoyed reading Agatha Christie’s novels as a young adult. I’ve always loved books with a mystery!

2. How long does it take for you to write a book and get it published?

Claire: It normally takes about five months to write the first draft, a few months of tinkering with it before I feel confident enough to send to my editor and then another couple of months editing, proof reading, copy editing. All together it never takes less than a year.

3. How did you come up with the idea for this book?

Claire: I love books about twisted, obsessive friendships and I’ve always been fascinated by twin relationships. I once knew a set of twins who were very possessive of each other so the idea grew from there for Beatrice and Ben’s storyline. With Abi’s storyline I wanted to write about the grief of a sibling as my own brother died when I was twenty-one. It wasn’t until I’d finished writing the first chapter that I realised that Abi needed to be a twin too.

4. What is the first thing you did when you learned you were going to be published?

Claire: I think I might have actually cried! I’d wanted it for so many years, since I was a child, and I had written books before that never secured an agent, so to hear I had won, that a novel of mine was actually going to be published was so overwhelming. It sounds corny but it was a dream come true!

5. Can you give us a sneak peek into future releases?

Claire: I have a book coming out in August in the UK called Local Girl Missing. This is again about the power struggle in a female friendship but it’s also a murder mystery too. It’s about a woman called Francesca who returns to her seaside hometown after the body of her best friend, Sophie, washes up eighteen years after she went missing. It’s about a town with secrets and poses the question whether we can ever run away from our past.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Claire Douglas has worked as a journalist for fifteen years writing features for women’s magazines and national newspapers, but she’s dreamed of being a novelist since the age of seven. She finally got her wish after winning the Marie Claire Debut Novel Award with her first novel, THE SISTERS. She lives in Bath with her husband and two children.