I confess to being very nervous about reading the book - Rachel and I know each other and work together. What does one say if you dislike a book your friend slaved five years over? Thankfully, I don't have to answer that question because I am incredibly impressed. So well done, Rachel.

Having hard time putting this book into words other than - WOW. It is literary, yet wraps itself around many genres. Beautifully layered, complex but readable. Can practically taste the descriptions. Thought provoking, topical while pushing boundaries. The tension and complexity is so compelling.

What impressed me, as a fellow writer, is how she drips in the details without reverting to the infamous 'info dumps.' This is always tricky to do, but even more so when one creates a world that isn't precisely the one we live in. This isn't sci-fi. It is more like a sliding-doors scenario (her words at the launch) - the world is South Africa present, but more as if the world (and SA) had made slightly different choices and what those choices would have looked like on our roads and transport. Even so, how tempting it would have been for a lesser writer to start describing and building such a scenario at ad nauseam. The slight differences in the now of Sister-Sister vs now of 2013 and threaded into the story, make sense and don't make the reader feel they need a dictionary (like Clockwork Orange) or a glossary or a load of maps.

Already looking forward to giving this book a reread. The TBR pile is rather big, but may have to work it in there, anyway.

(Pssst...men readers. . . you will like this book. Do not be put off by the title being written in italics or the fact it says Sister-Sister rather than Brother-Brother. It is not mushy. Promise.)