Review: My Sister Rosa - Justine Larbalestier

 

Review: My Sister Rosa - Justine Larbalestier - January 2016

What would you do if you knew that one of your family members was a psychopath ? Would you just sit by and do nothing as it gets worst or would you try and seek help or solve it the only way you can imagine ? Would you wait till things got completely out of hand before you would do anything or would you try and nip it in the bud ? 

My Sister Rosa is a story told from the perspective of Che who is 17 years old and Rosa's older brother. Rosa is ten years old and the spitting image of Shirley Temple. She doesn't look like she could hurt a fly, especially since she looks like an angelic little blonde curly hair and blue eyed doll. The thing though is that Che is convinced that his sister is a budding pyschopath and with their latest move from Australia to New York , things are about to get a whole lot worst especially as it looks like Rosa is progressing from convincing her best friend to kill her guinea pig.  As someone who has a family member or two that suffer from the similar personalities, I found this book really enlightening and at times scary to read especially as Che gets further into the novel and discovers that Psychopathy is actually genetic. One of the parts of the book that fascinated me was after tragedy strikes and Che is convinced that Rosa is getting worst, Che and Rosa go for an MRI which showed their brain patterns and talked about how with people who suffer from psychopathy that they tend to have dark patches in their brain scans. This part got me thinking about my own family and what the results of all of our brain scans would be. Without giving too much of the story away, as this is definitely a book that I suggest everyone should read - even if you are only wanting to gain a little bit of insight into what it is like to live with someone who is on the psychopathy scale. I had previously read one of Justine's books Liar but wasn't too impressed, but I have to admit My Sister Rosa was amazing and I consider this to be one of those WOW everyone must read books and if you are studying psychology or social work, this should be one of your fictional education reads.