This is my third Mary Westmacott novel (I've already read Absent In The Spring and Giant's Bread both of which I would recommend over this one) and sadly I have to say that if this had been my first encounter with Agatha Christie's psychological novels than I possibly wouldn't have bothered with reading any of the other five.

First of all: the synopsis for this book lies. If you are interested in the story about two sisters then it's better if you don't even start it, unless you want to be seriously disappointed. Secondly: it's very difficult to rate and review this book as a whole since most of its problems derive from the fact that it can be divided into two almost completely separate parts in the middle. The first part deals with the story of the two sisters: Laura and Shirley, and for this part I would gladly give four stars (maybe even five). The book starts in a surprisingly dark place and it has some of that raw and uncomfortable (yet not judging) sincerity that made me love Absent In The Spring so much. Towards the middle of the book the story gets a little bit too mundane but all-in-all I believe that if Christie had continued this story about the suffocating sisterly love, then we could have ended up with a very enjoyable read. If.

The second part of the novel (especially while considering the first part) for me is almost completely without merits. Out of the blue we are introduced to a completely new POW character who is not nearly as interesting or likeable as Laura or Shirley. The focus of the story is changed, so much so, that many significant events regarding the lives of the sisters happen between two chapters. The ending has very little to do with the issues presented at the beginning of the novel and it's soaked in that same cliche and unoriginal kitsch that makes me dislike the more metaphysical works of Christie so much.

I don't really understand what caused this sudden change of direction. I've read some other reviews who theorize that Christie intended the book to be much darker, similar to the opening chapters, but got scared of her own creation. While I believe that this is a possibility, I think that she may have intended the book to be an exploration of the different burden's of love: jelous love of a family member, self-distrtucting love for someone unworthy of it, the love of God etc. If this is the case then I think it would have been better if she told multiple plotlines parallel to each other with the sisters being in the center (similarly to how she did this in Giant's Bread) or if she wrote an anthology of short stories around the theme.

As a conclusion, I can't really recommend this book to anyone. As I said the first part is really good, but the second one is so insufferable that I admit, I had to skip some pages (something that I rarely do when I read something serious). It's like if someone took all of the strenghts and all of the weaknesses of the Mary Westmacott novels and placed it on the two trays of a scale. I hope the remaining three novels are better than this one.