DubaiReader

I heard this book being discussed in an on-line book festival and it sounded fascinating. (...so I guess on-line festivals do work for disseminating new titles.)
The premise of the book appealed to me: one father with two wives and two similarly aged daughters, only one of whom was aware the other existed. The families are both coloured, which is topical right now, although the current movement had not started when my book group made the book choice.

The first half of the book is narrated by Dana. She knows she has a sister and that her father spends most of the week with his 'other' family. She and her mother go spying on Chaurisse and her mother and accept that they are the secret family. They live in the same town but cannot attend the same school - and Chaurisse always get first pick.
The second half is narrated by Chaurisse, who eventually meets up with Dana and is impressed by her beauty and confidence, but mystified by her secrecy.

Although things are obviously going to come to a head eventually, I thought the run-up to this was quite slow. There is a lot of back-story, covering both families and several sets of grandparents; it's not a book that you can easily put down and come back to.

Having recently finished An American Marriage by the same author, I wasn't so impressed with the ending of Silver Sparrow. I gave An American Marriage 4 stars, but the disappointing ending dropped Silver Sparrow to 3.5 for me.