Published by Penguin Viking Books, 21 March 2019, £3.50

Another true gem from Dinah Jefferies! Packed with gorgeous detail, mystery, humour, and romance. Any season, any day, any time- a new Dinah Jefferies book will whisk you away into an exotic vintage dream. After a few pages of The Missing Sister, you will be strolling down dynamic streets of 1930s Burma feeling the humidity and getting peckish for the local food.

Jefferies is already established as one of my favourite writers, her addictive stories are always flowing beautifully as the far-flung settings she visits. The Missing Sister is the most mysterious addition to her repertoire. It is about a young English woman called Belle, who takes up a job as a singer for a hotel in Burma. Her father had just passed away and she has no connections left at home. She recently found a newspaper clipping that stated how her parents were living in Rangoon when their baby daughter disappeared; a daughter that they had before her and that she never knew about. She decides to go to Burma, still under British colonial rule, to see if there are any remnants of her parent’s history and her past.

Racial politics and mental health are the two main compelling themes, especially the treatment of women suffering from mental health problems. Ignorance is recognised as the biggest enemy. Interwoven with Belle’s new adventure are segments of her mother’s life from a few decades earlier. These chapters are written in the first person, which compared to Belle’s third person POV are a little jarring, but certainly, thicken the plot. I love how Belle begins to connect threads of mystery and how friendly characters she meets along the way appear disturbingly suspicious. Moving melancholia and heart-fluttering moments punctuate continuously- and what a wonderful ending!

Many thanks to Georgia Taylor at Penguin for my review copy

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