The Sister Pact

by Stacie Ramey

Overview

Content warning. This book deals with depression, drug use, suicide, and grief.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781728297217
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	05/07/2024
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

STACIE RAMEY attended the University of Florida and Penn State, where she received a Master of Science degree in Speech Pathology and Spalding University for her MFA in Creative Writing. When she’s not writing, she finds her happiness by engaging in Netflix wars with her grown children or beating her husband in Scrabble. She lives in Wellington, Florida with her husband and an ever changing number of rescue dogs.

Editorial Reviews

"A well-written portrait, not just of grief but also of the pain of realizing you didn’t really know someone you thought you were close to. Ramey’s haunting novel is reminiscent of Jennifer Brown’s Hate List (2009), with similar themes of devastating hindsight, and Gayle
Forman’s I Was Here (2015), which also captures the desperation to make sense of a loved one’s suicide... A heavy but powerful read that tackles big topics without letting them drag the narrative down." — Booklist

"A powerful story of redemption, forgiveness, love, and the ability to persevere." — VOYA Magazine

"The story reads like Go Ask Alice...As Allie learns the many sordid secrets of her sister's concealed life, she begins to understand the powerful influence her sister had on her and, a talented painter, struggles to find her own voice. " — Kirkus Reviews

"The story is well written and will hold teens' interest" — School Library Connection

From the Publisher

2015-08-31
In the aftermath of her sister's suicide, Allie's grief is thick and relentless. Allie adored her older sister, Leah. What with boyfriend troubles, their mom's Xanax addiction, and their dad's affair, the sisters had a pact that they would die together if things ever got too awful. Now, Allie is reeling from her sister's solo fatal overdose, and she's not coping well. The story reads like Go Ask Alice, as, page to page, Allie's swigging NyQuil or swallowing yet another pill. She's constantly drifting in a haze of queasy highs and nauseous lows. Frequent ghostly visitations from her dead sister seem to lead Allie ever deeper into drug use and further from reality. As Allie learns the many sordid secrets of her sister's concealed life, she begins to understand the powerful influence her sister had on her and, a talented painter, struggles to find her own voice. Allie's fraught inner monologues and hallucinated conversations with her sister succeed in illustrating Allie's emotional struggle. As if her own struggles aren't enough, Allie's flat, present-tense narration recounts additional teen drama, such as friends' squabbles and sexual dalliances, and much of the dialogue feels scripted: "Don't push me away. I didn't mean it. I don't love her like—." An earnest, overstuffed look at the collateral damage of suicide and drug abuse. (Fiction. 13-18)

Kirkus Reviews