Keep Her Sweet

by Helen Fitzgerald

When a middle-aged couple downsizes to the countryside for an easier life, their two daughters become isolated, argumentative and violent … A chilling, vicious and darkly funny psychological thriller from bestselling author Helen FitzGerald.
________________________________________

Desperate to enjoy their empty nest, Penny and Andeep downsize to the countryside, to forage, upcycle and fall in love again, only to be joined by their two twenty-something daughters, Asha and Camille.

Living on top of each other in a tiny house, with no way to make money, tensions simmer, and as Penny and Andeep focus increasingly on themselves, the girls become isolated, argumentative and violent.

When Asha injures Camille, a family therapist is called in, but she shrugs off the escalating violence between the sisters as a classic case of sibling rivalry … and the stress of the family move.

But this is not sibling rivalry. The sisters are in far too deep for that.

This is a murder, just waiting to happen…

Chilling, vicious and darkly funny, Keep Her Sweet is not just a tense, sinister psychological thriller, but also a startling look at sister relationships and the bonds they share … or shatter.

Genres: Fiction, Audiobook, Crime, Thriller

270 pages, Paperback

First published May 26, 2022

About the author

Helen FitzGerald is the second youngest of thirteen children. She grew up in the small town of Kilmore, Victoria, Australia, and studied English and History at the University of Melbourne. Via India and London, Helen came to Glasgow University where she completed a Diploma and Masters in Social Work. She works part time as a criminal justice social worker in Glasgow. She's married to screenwriter Sergio Casci, and they have two children.

Follow her on twitter @fitzhelen

Reviews

[Suz · Rating 2 out of 5]

What an oddball of a read!

This is quite popular but it didn't hit the mark for me. 5 stars for an original plot, but it was so unusual and violent and off the wall that it sat uncomfortably with me. The narration was great, read by Jennifer Vuletic, she was able to deliver the comedic parts well, as it was darkly comic in many places.

The entire ensemble of characters was hard to find goodness in, and the one that I found myself rooting for ended up as crazy as the rest.

A pair married empty nesters attempting to downsize, their adult children following. This couple has a strange social media channel where they once were making brownies online while their adult daughters are abusing each other in the background.

They see a family counselor that has a strange need to keep up with appearances with her own family life in tatters; a widower whose partner led a double life, with a meth smoking adult daughter consistently in and out of rehab - who ends up living in a dental van painted with a demonic-looking set of teeth painted in green. This woman has an unbreakable desire to fix things. This family just may need it.

Sibling rivalry, dysfunctional, enmeshed, and co-dependant families, this story has it all. This was really quite strange. I have had the author's book The Cry on my list for some time now, now I am not so sure. It is violent so I will add a trigger warning for this, but it forms the basis of the story. Unfortunately, this book was not for me, no matter how well written it is.

[Gloria (Ms. G's Bookshelf) · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐️3.5 Stars⭐️
Brace yourself for craziness, I found Keep Her Sweet: Sisters can be deadly by Helen Fitzgerald to be a bizarre story and unsettling. I’m sure it will be popular with many readers but it wasn’t for me.

I read Fitzgerald’s last book some time ago in which I have never forgotten a horrendous scene that involved red boots and once again in this new book there is a scene I will never forget involving fishing line! The author is exceptional at setting a scene in your mind, unable to be erased.

I found the total cast of characters unlikeable and totally messed up in one way or another. Parents and empty nesters Jen and Andeep move to Ballarat to downsize not expecting their adult daughters to suddenly be living with mum and dad again in their tiny new residence!

This is a domestic drama (with a touch of horror) that includes sibling rivalry and a dysfunctional family who engage an elderly family therapist who is just a smidge unhinged in my opinion.

I did absolutely love the setting of the story which was in an old house which invoked a real sense of vivid detail and simmering suspense.

I’m sure this will resonate with those readers who like a walk on the dark side and love a touch of dark humour.

Publication Date 28 June 2022
Publisher Affirm Press

Thank you so much Affirm Press for a copy of the book.

[Zelda FeatzReviews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Random Things Tours and Orenda Books for this Review copy.
Siblings argue, growing up they may even get physical with one another from time to time. It’s normal, it’s part of growing up. But where do you draw the line? When is enough, enough?
When you open Keep Her Sweet you are introduced to the Moloney-Sigh family. A family on the brink of disaster. The author gives you a front-row seat view of this troubled family as she takes you down a windy road that you know will only end once you have hit a brick wall at full speed along with this wacky family.
Helen Fitzgerald tells a frightening story about a dysfunctional family, giving you the various character’s perspectives, that allow you to get to know all the family members. She drops you into this family home, and what an experience it is. If you have ever wondered what happens behind the closed door of someone else’s home, this book will show you why it is best not to know.
Camille is tired of her sister getting away with everything. Asha might be older, but she is crazy – and it seems only Cam notices how troubled Asha is. Desperate for normal family life, Cam suggests family therapy – hoping someone will see how wrong the family connections in the Moloney-Singh household are.
Penny has never turned away from therapy, she has experimented with all kinds of therapy, yet family therapy will be a first for her – so she agrees. When Mrs S arrives at the family home for their first session, she is not what they expected. As the family starts looking at their relationships, digging into their feelings, change is inevitable – but will it be the changes you expect?
This is a darkly, troubling story about a broken family, one woman’s belief that nothing is more important than family and a daughter troubled with drug addiction. I was drawn into this rather peculiar tale and found it hard to pull myself away from this disturbing family home. I felt as if I was a fly on the wall, watching these people. I pity anyone born into a family like this one. We all think our families are the worst – but after reading this book you will find that perhaps your family is not all that bad.
Penny is a curious woman. She might once have been a doting mother, but now she is self-centred, her only concern is that the therapist will think she is a bad mother. This woman is so self-absorbed she has no idea who her children are, or even what is happening in her home. This character annoyed me to no end with her selfishness. As for Asha, well she is her mother’s daughter – what a spoilt brat. Her sense of entitlement was amazing. Who could put up with this? Camille’s whining was beyond me. She was so unhappy, but why was she still at home? She was weak and easily intimidated by her sister. After a lifetime of enduring Asha’s abuse, you would expect her to move on, or at least stand up for herself. Despite recognising the problems in her family, all she seemed to do was whine about it in her diary.
I loved Mrs S. I could picture this motherly woman, her love for her family oozed off the pages. This loving selfless woman was a fabulous addition to the story, I adored her and her struggles with her daughter just made me love her more.
This book was something different. It is not your run of the mill psychological thriller. The author added a special touch with her wacky characters making this an extremely entertaining read. I loved feeling as if I was in the house with Asha and Camille as they got in each other’s way.
If you are looking for an unusual read that will leave you appreciating your family a little more, then grab a copy of this one – you will love it.
https://featzreviews.com

[Lynn McB · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mmnnnn the blurb intimated this was a black comedy, I wasn’t sure about that. A bizarre journey through a number of mental health issues. At times the two sisters were intensely irritating.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

And I thought my family was dysfunctional ... I mean, we've had the odd ding-dong over the years - who hasn't? But still, nothing quite on the scale of the Moloney-Singhs. They are very much in a league of their own. And yet ... they are recognisably authentic, if perhaps a little exaggerated for literary effect. But the kinds of challenges they face - sibling rivalry, failed relationships, the gradual drifting apart of a once tighter family unit - are things that a good number of readers would be able to identify with. Even the therapist, Joy, brought in to try and facilitate some kind of harmony amongst the warring family, faces challenges which are all too real, bringing her own unique perspective of conflict and angst into an already volatile little unit. And the results? A story which will entertain, surprise an perhaps challenge you in ways you are not expecting.

If you are looking for a Worst Case Scenario kind of dark humour, or maybe even the Ash Mountain kind of emotionally charged narrative where tension is as hot as the bushfire which dominates the story, then you are perhaps in for a bit of a surprise. This book felt, to me, like some kind of strange familial Big Brother experiment - a disintegrating family unit who move into less than glamorous accommodations and try to make the best of a relationship which can at best be described as strained. The Moloney-Singhs are a very odd bunch and I cannot say that I particularly warmed to any of them. There is Dad, Andeep, a disgraced comic whose jokes are wearing more than a little thin with his loved ones. Mom, Penny, who laughs in all the right places but who is bearing the strain with only slightly better grace and style than her daughters. As for the sisters, Asha and Camille - well let's just say I'm glad that Mandie and I get on a lot better than we used to as kids. Talk about toxic relationships. Needy, demanding, striving for that ever elusive dominance and one-upmanship ... And that could really describe either one. In fairness, Camille is perhaps the most logica and sane of the two, but by the end of the book, that really is just splitting hairs.

This really is a story of a family under fire. Of four people pulling in very different directions whilst all trying to live under one dark, dank, dull roof. Money troubles amplify and intensify the cracks, anger adding fuel to the slow burning fire which threatens to devastate them all. The narrative style is familiar and yet feels unique, told from the points of view of The Mum, The Second-Born, and The Therapist. It makes it feel slightly more clinical, like a psychologists dissection of their story rather than the first hand accounts that it could be. Even though the focus may be on specific characters point of view, it is a third person narrative perspective which steers us through Penny and Joy's stories. Only The Second-Born, Camille, speaks with a first person voice, and whilst her viewpoint dominates, and her actions cause the biggest surprises of all, it is very much an ensemble story, one that is fascinating and disconnected all at once.

The book touches on themes of loss, obsession, betrayal and addiction. There are religious undertones, a kind of crazed belief system that drives Asha to a point of near madness and certainly some actions which would be well outside of the realms of Joy's expertise. I questioned the actions of the family as a whole, occasionally sympathised with Joy and Camille, but, more often than not, had a desire to slap the whole lot of them. They're the kind of people who I met them in real life, I'd walk away from, but, much like car crash TV, kept me rapt when it came to their story. It was a kind of morbid fascination - just how far can these guys fall. Pretty far apparently. Joy was a ... revelation? I don't know if that's really he right word. She's a mother, a widow and as resilient as hell. Ten out of ten for trying. 11 out of 10 for being a fixer of the most unexpected kind.

Oh, and Andeep really is a dick. Sorry. That just had to be said.

A fascinating an original tale of a family in rapid decline. The dark humour is still there, although more subtle than previous books, and the hallmark touches of Helen Fitzgerald's brilliant ability to create characters, albeit loathsome ones, and very vivid settings. But the strength of this book comes from the examination of family life. Of the spiralling madness and intensifying anger. Where both nothing and everything is happening all at the same time. It's a train wreck you just know is waiting to happen, and the only question is who, if anyone, will survive.

[Mairead Hearne (swirlandthread.com) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Keep Her Sweet by Helen Fitzgerald was published May 26th with Orenda Books and is described as ‘chilling, vicious and darkly funny…not just a tense, sinister psychological thriller, but a startling look at sister relationships and the bonds they share … or shatter.’

If you have read Helen Fitzgerald in the past then you will already know to expect the unexpected. In 2020 I reviewed the emotive and forceful Ash Mountain and recall being quite shocked and upset as scenes unfolded before me. Keep Her Sweet is a very alternative offering. I was definitely shocked but in a very different way. This is the story of an extremely dysfunctional and highly toxic family, the Moloney-Singhs. Parents, Andeep and Penny, make a decision to downsize after their two daughters, Asha and Camille, leave home. This was to be their time to reconnect and rediscover love lost. Moving to a much smaller home away from the heightened pace of city living the decision was made that they would live a simpler life leaving the trappings of old behind.

But, as we all well know, life has other plans and Asha and Camille, both in their twenties, end up moving back in with their parents. This new house is too small for four grown adults and tempers quickly fray. Penny has long stopped laughing at Andeep’s jokes and his habits are annoying her but she wants their relationship to improve. Asha and Camille are incapable of being in the same room as each other and the arguments get more vicious by the minute.

Looking for some kind of solution to find peace in their now disrupted home, Penny invites a therapist, Joy, for a family counselling session. Joy is intrigued professionally by this family that appears to be disintegrating before her eyes. She listens to their words, is left stunned by some outbursts but has an open mind. Joy’s initial impression is of a case of classic sibling rivalry between Asha and Camille. With more sessions she is convinced that the fractured relationships can be salvaged.

Joy has her own personal problems. She tries to justify her life and the rapid changes that are taking place and is almost accepting of her lot. Originally from England, Joy would love to return home to visit her own sister but obstacles are in her way and she is not sure how she can best get around them. She is living on the edge, with her clients providing the one piece of security in her life.

Helen Fitzgerald takes the reader into the very disturbing and, almost alternative, world of a very VERY messed up family. Taking toxic to a whole new level, these are four individuals who really should not be in the same space together, not to mind the same house. This is a family living in an environment of inexorable misery riddled with violent outbursts and psychotic episodes. This is family-living taken to the extreme.

Most certainly not for everyone, Keep Her Sweet is a book that pendulates between complete madness and genius. There is dark, dark humour throughout and it is with a certain disbelief that I kept reading. Quirky, seriously off-beat and definitely alarming, Keep Her Sweet is a claustrophobic and disquieting read that has left me pondering what is really going on behind closed doors.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helen Fitzgerald is one of my go-to authors. Her writing is sharp, shocking, dark and always laugh out loud funny. You do need a dark, almost macabre sense of humour to appreciate her scathing wit. There were passages in this book that I read out to my husband, they are funny, but shocking funny. Be warned!

Fitzgerald takes a family unit and breaks them down into four individual characters who have very few redeeming features between them. Penny and Andeep Malony-Singh are the parents. They thought that relocating to the countryside, to a smaller house where they could upcycle pieces of homeware (basically junk ...) would be their own happily ever after. The problem here is that no matter where you may roam, your assorted baggage usually arrives too. It may be a little later, but it will arrive.
Penny and Andeep's baggage are their two adult daughters; Asha and Camille. You've heard of sibling rivalry? Well, take that and multiply by thousands and you get some sort of idea of this relationship. The new house is certainly not big enough for the four of them, and the chances of them living in harmony is almost nil.

When things become violent, Joy is called in to help. A family therapist, in her seventies, widowed and with a grown up daughter of her own, Joy appears to be the salve that could help to heal these family wounds. However, Joy herself says, in the very first line of the book; 'Unhappy families always cheer her up.' A strange thing to think to oneself, and an indicator that all is not glorious in Joy's life either.

The story gets darker and darker as the author cleverly untangles and lies bare the family dynamics in the Malony- Singh household. We come to learn that Andeep is a washed-up, unfunny comedian who really has no interest in his family. He just wants fame and glory. Penny is familiar with the bottom of a drinks glass and Asha and Camilla are totally f***** up beyond help. It's a car crash waiting to happen, and it's played out in glorious technicolour, every single step downwards into an actual pit of hell.

I loved it. Its cruel and funny and true and violent. Helen Fitzgerald always challenges her reader, there's no hiding here, you will read things that leave a mark on your brain, something like staring at a bright light and then still seeing it when you close your eyes.

All honour to Joy, who tries her best but is gradually worn down by her own family issues, culminating in a finale that I certainly didn't expect, but welcomed with open arms and a little bit of glee too.

Read it, if you dare!

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Unhappy families always cheered her up.”

This intriguing first line sets the tone for this addictive portrayal of dark domesticity featuring one of the most messed-up families I’ve ever read.

Penny and Andeep Maloney-Singh should have been enjoying their empty nest but their baby birds have come back to roost. Tensions rise, tempers flare, violence escalates and the Maloney-Singhs become a family on fire and hire therapist Joy to help them douse the flames. But even she underestimates just how broken they are, finding herself caught up in a tableau of misery that seems to be speeding towards a catastrophic outcome.

What a ride! When I started this book I thought I knew what to expect but instead found myself reading something even more sinister, savage and shocking that I anticipated. The author explores topics such as sibling rivalry, unhappy marriage, bad parenting, mental health and religious fervour with nuance and humour. The multiple points of view give us very different perspectives that not only add to the suspense but would make me question if what I was reading was as reliable as I first thought. Would I get to the end and discover I’d been fooled from the start?

The Maloney-Singhs are one a dysfunctional, toxic and damaged family. Their home and hearts are a cesspit of bitterness, rage, trauma and fear that rapidly escalates with fatal results. They vacillate between being characters we can understand and ones we will never fathom, but they are utterly compelling and great to read. My heart broke for Camille. She seemed the most sane and normal of them all but seemed forgotten by her parents and was always on the receiving end of Asha’s vicious outbursts. I wanted to scream at her parents to step in and help! While very unlikeable, Asha made a great villain and I loved to hate her. She added so much tension and suspense to the story and was that great combination of unbelievably crazy and totally believable.

Darkly funny, chaotic, claustrophobic and unflinching, Keep Her Sweet is an intense psychological thriller that will make you grateful for the family you have.

[Norrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sibling rivalry (well, mostly Asha tbh) and toxic family at its finest. This was a fascinating and agitating story, violent but often spiced up with some dark humor.

[Raven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helen Fitzgerald is rapidly gaining a reputation as one of the most diverse and flexible writers on the crime fiction scene, and Keep Her Sweet focusing on the implosion of a dysfunctional family in the most extreme way possible, only furthers this reputation…

Take a husband and wife whose relationship is showing significant signs of strain, despite their intention to reconnect when their daughters had left the family nest. As the wife, Penny, drolly says at one point, “She didn’t want to have sex with him, she didn’t want to divorce him either. She wanted to kill him,” and her husband Andeep who is quite frankly one of the most annoying men ever, clinging on to the remnants of his showbiz career, there seems to be enough toxicity and unrest to easily fill the whole of the book. Add into the mix the return of their two twenty-something daughters, Camille and the mentally unsteady Asha, and Fitzgerald has set the scene for the most twisted soap opera ever. Enter one family therapist, with her own difficult daughter, set against the backdrop of a rapidly deteriorating marriage and extreme sibling rivalry, and the story can only take a violent turn, setting the scene for a very darkly humorous tale that will have you belly laughing and cringing in equal measure.

This has to be Fitzgerald’s most character driven book to date, and yes, her characterisation of this disparate group of people is flawless from start to finish. Like all good fiction, there is so much more mileage in characters that are so deeply unpleasant, that we as readers take on the role of voyeur as this family starts to fall apart at the seams in spectacular fashion. The terminal ending of Penny and Andeep’s marriage is a familiar tale, but seems relatively normal when compared with the toxic hatred escalating under their roof. As seventy-something family therapist, Joy enters the fray, with her own background as complete doormat, constantly bailing out her own daughter for drug related trouble, the signs are there that all will not go well for anyone involved in this.

The intensity of the hatred between Camille and Asha is beautifully rendered, as Asha goes from calm to total banshee wailing madness at the drop of the hat, and the seemingly steady Camille shows us the devil on her shoulder, knowing exactly what buttons to press to exacerbate her sister’s wrath to def-con one million. Camille becomes involved in the farcical affair that Asha has had with a straitlaced man of the cloth, that has led to Asha’s most recent meltdown after she assaulted him with a coffee tamper. She navigates “the happy-clappy weirdo crap” of the pastor and his wife on Asha’s behalf, but also it has to be said for her own sadistic pleasure. On the back of this, a real turning point occurs in their relationship that can only end in violence and retribution. And what violent retribution there is, with all the signs pointing to one sister or the other resorting to extreme violence, “For hours I have been fantasising about killing her; strangling her with my bare hands…stabbing her in the stomach with a much bigger clay tool…so it scrapes bones and squelches organs.” Like a souped up malevolent Brady Bunch, this family lurches from one psychotic episode to another, and that is the complete joy of this book from start to finish.

As someone who actively avoids family sagas because of the chocolate box schmaltz, the overcoming of adversity, family resolution and acceptance, blah, blah, blah, Keep Her Sweet totally represents the kind of family I want to read about. It’s a tale of pretty much unrelenting misery and pain, with a cast of characters who, to be honest, you would ordinarily cross the street to avoid, or, more extreme perhaps, move out of their neighbourhood completely, but it is so, so deliciously blackly funny, with it’s moments of cartoonish violence, and those sharp, spiky observations of human behaviour that Fitzgerald does so beautifully. If you want to take a walk on the dark side, and have a bloody good belly laugh in the process, whilst feeling faintly, just faintly mind you, guilty at what you’re laughing at, this is totally the book for you. I loved it.

[Adelyne · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 stars rounded up, and only because I finished it!

Good grief, what have I just listened to. The tagline on the cover promises "a murder waiting to happen" and I couldn't agree more as I could easily have murdered any of the characters in the book. They were literally all deranged - I'm more than OK with flawed characters as I know this is what makes fiction interesting and enjoyable, but these need to be in the backdrop of otherwise normal people! Or at least relatable, I get that fictional characters do things that I wouldn't do, but at least I'd like to be able to see some line of logic with why they did what they did. There were a couple here that I thought seemed alright at first, but any residual sense of rationality pretty much goes out the window in the last couple of chapters .

There is a relatively small cast of characters, centred in our main family and a family therapist. Making up the promised "sibling rivalry on steroids" we have first-born Asha, who is properly mental right from the start of the book, where she returns home on an electronic tag for attacking the wife of her married lover. It is slowly revealed that she is basically a religious nutjob who thinks that her lover will return to her side if his recently-deceased daughter somehow rises from the dead (not sure I follow the logic there, surely he would be more inclined to remain with the girl's mother if she were still around?) and spouts prayer left-right-centre trying to make that happen . Younger daughter Camilla appears more normal at first, but that impression very quickly descends in the second half of the book . Even the so-called family therapist has a bonkers lifestyle, with a messed up family life of her own (not sure how she is able to attract that many customers - she numbers them as Family #1, #2 etc. - there's no flipping way I would trust a woman with that many issues of her own to help me solve mine!) that she doesn't seem interested in actually resolving .

The narrator was also either amazing or terrible, depending on how you look at it: On one hand, she perfectly captured the sheer insanity of the characters with the screechy tone, but on the other hand, that same tone drove me nuts. I listened to the first half in a single sitting as I had it on while doing something else, then I thought of DNF-ing but then came on here and was encouraged to continue by the reviews referencing a good ending, so I kept going in hope of that. Only to be severely disappointed.

[Renita D'Silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dark

[Emma Balkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a bizarre story! There were several things that endeared this book to me, including the plausibly described settings of Ballarat and Geelong, the highly dysfunctional family relationships and the wickedly dark sense of humour which pervades the story. It was quite sad in places too, but the ending seemed to careen out of control, culminating in dismemberment.

[Staceywh_17 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Narrated through several of the characters, mainly from Camille and her therapists POV, Keep Her Sweet is a blinder of a book and quite the page turner.

I have no idea where to start with the characters, I mean the family were totally something else, damaged, heavily flawed and made for some great reading.

Dark, funny, dysfunctional and very intense. Helen takes us one hell of a bumpy ride, with twists, turns, violence and chaos.

I loved this book and can't wait to immerse myself in more of Helen's works.

Many thanks to Random Things Tours for my tour spot.

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

[Marijke Vansteenkiste · Rating 2 out of 5]

Af en toe geestig, ontspannend, maar ongeloofwaardig.

[Nick Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit disappointing, compared to how I’ve enjoyed most of the other books by the same author that I have read. It’s hard to pinpoint why - this tale of dysfunctional family in Australia and their family therapist had some clever ideas and I found it witty and exciting in places. However I think it was a combination of characters and shocking events which didn’t engage me this time - Fitzgerald has used gore and discomfort before and I’ve quite enjoyed it then, but here I don’t think I particularly liked or sympathised with any of the main protagonists, hence it just felt like fucked up things happening to folk I didn’t particularly care about.

[Zaynah Khalil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very odd book.

I really enjoyed reading this because it was so well written, easy to read and narrated in a way where I needed to know what happened next. However, I felt really unsettled at the end as it became so dark and violent.

The chapters switch between narratives of the younger sister (Camille), therapist (Joy) and the mum. Although the main story was about the family, the therapists story was so engrossing and I found myself skipping ahead to find out what happened to her. I was quite heartbroken for her in the end.

Camille’s chapters make her seem normal compared to her sister’s behaviour at the beginning but towards the end it’s clear she has lost her mind a bit and she starts sharing her sister’s crazy erratic vibe.

Overall I would say the characters are delusional, the story was gripping and completely unpredictable but it gets a bit too crazy for me at the end. A 2 star ending but a 4 star read, so 3 seems fair.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Domestic thriller with real bite - Penny and Andeep are too busy messing up their marriage to notice the escalating cruelty and violence between their adult daughters Asha and Camille. Family therapy is not proving effective, and counsellor Joy has her own problems - her late husband has left her in debt and her daughter is struggling with addiction. Soon events begin to spiral out of control for the girls.

This was a dark but entertaining portrayal of toxic family relationships, told with wit and style. The characters are all totally unsympathetic - self absorbed, needy or vicious - and isolated from others by a series of previous bad decisions. The clichéd phrase ‘train crash’ is certainly apt here, it’s horrible and heading for disaster, but you can’t look away!

I enjoyed the humour, and the way the different areas of Ballarat (and their housing) are used to mirror different stages in the various family breakdowns. This wouldn’t be my usual choice of genre, so I may be slightly mean in only giving 3*, as it is definitely entertaining and well crafted.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you ever think your own family is dysfunctional, then wait until you meet the family in this book!

The story alternates between a few of the characters but mainly Camille, the younger sister and Joy, the therapist. It doesn’t take long to realise there are a lot of issues within this family. They call on Joy to try and get them back on an even keel but the further into the story I got, the less that seemed likely to happen.

The characters aren’t overly likeable although I liked Camille and Joy the best. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Camille and what she has to put up with, especially with her elder sister Asha. Asha really isn’t that likeable and more than a few times I wanted to give her a good slap! Camille maybe the youngest, but seems to be the one who they all rely on to be the adult. Joy on the other hand is struggling with her own family issues never mind trying to help others with theirs!

Keep Her Sweet is an engrossing family drama with a dark twist. I enjoyed the dry sense of humour which did make me chuckle on occasions. The author knows how to pen a compelling and entertaining read and before I knew it, I had devoured this novel in no time at all. The tension that builds up between the sisters intensified and it had me on the edge of my seat throughout. An absorbing page turner!

My thanks to Anne Cater for an invite to be part of the blog tour and to Orenda Books for an advanced readers copy of this book. All opinions are my own and not biased in anyway.

[Olivia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have never disliked every single character in a book before, but here we are. They were all so frustrating and annoying with no redeeming traits. The manipulation, poorly made decisions and violence was too much for me.
This book made me so uncomfortable, which I understand was probably the point, but that didn’t make it any easier for me to read. I just wanted to get this story over and done with. Yuck. I feel like I need to cleanse myself of this book now.

[Karen Cole · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a sister and mother, I've participated in and witnessed sibling rivalry more times than I can count; sometimes merely niggly and on other occasions, rather more vicious. However, next time my daughters are arguing with one another, I will remember Keep Her Sweet. Helen Fitzgerald's latest is described as a darkly funny novel – and indeed it is – but really this macabre tale of a dysfunctional family should be considered uplit! Everybody's families are weird and messy but few are as screwed up as the Moloney-Singhs...
There are three narrators in the book; the chapters following The Therapist and The Mum are in the third person while those entitled The Second-Born are told from her first person perspective as she records events in her diary. Readers are given a centre-row seat as their family falls apart and it feels a little like the worst excesses of reality TV – it's as if the Osbournes at their most troubled have moved to Ballarat. It does mean this is a deliciously addictive read and although Joy's observation at the start of the book that 'Unhappy families always cheered her up" may be a little unkind coming from a family therapist, there is probably more than a grain of truth there; these are truly awful people but Helen Fitzgerald writes with such piercing wit, I raced through the pages to discover what they would inflict on one another next.
Penny is The Mum and at first I could sympathise with her and Andeep's predicament; their plans to enjoy their empty nest are scuppered by the return of both their daughters and since they've downsized and have no money, it's no wonder tensions run high. However, she is an alcoholic whose self-centred neediness means she plays her daughters off against one another, and as she spirals into despair, is unable to be the parent they actually require. Meanwhile, I initially felt sorry for Andeep and even after his behaviour sparks further turmoil, I could still understand why he'd made his choices. He struck me as a middle-aged man seeking an ego boost, particularly as he clearly still pines for his career as a stand-up comedian. Penny's opinions of his act suggest he isn't actually very good and later in the novel we learn just how awful he is with a description of his act which is so gloriously offensive, it brought tears to my eyes. He may not be as blatantly damaged as the rest of them but as the story progressed, I realised what a terrible person he is too.
Asha is the most chillingly flawed member of the family and her moods are dangerous, particularly for her younger sister, Camille. Indeed, it's after Camille claims she broke her nose while playing netball that they agree to try family therapy. Asha's violent behaviour has led to her being forced to move back home but it becomes obvious that she has always been mercurial in temperament. Childhood incidents were passed off as kids being kids but they're actually rather darker, and even early examples of her rage hint at what comes later. She obsessively sticks to her beliefs with religious fervour and is scarily demanding and brutally unstable.
Camille seems to be the more normal sister and is undoubtedly one of the more likeable characters in the book but there is often a sense that her first-person perspective doesn't reveal the true story of her own role here. Even from her biased viewpoint, however, it is evident that she taunts her sister and her own behaviour impacts the toxic dynamics of this family too. As the furious relationship between the sisters descends into unhinged madness, just who is most at fault no longer matters because what we witness is so shockingly awful.
Poor Joy, the septuagenarian family therapist who honestly believes that family is everything, despite the issues she has with her own daughter, tries her best with the Moloney-Singhs but not all books conclude with a happy ending and really she is always fighting a losing battle here. However, the poignant subplot that follows her own desperate attempts to support her daughter mean that the astonishingly dark conclusion left me raising a glass to her (not containing goon sack wine, obviously!)
There is nothing sweet about Keep Her Sweet and yet I loved it; with its pitch-black humour, startlingly vindictive characters and compulsively twisted plot, this perceptively cruel and bitingly witty novel is a stand-out read. I highly recommend it.

[Jacob Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you enjoy a family drama, then Keep Her Sweet by Helen Fitzgerald should definitely be your next read. I’ve read Helen’s past two novels, and every time I’ve read something new by her, I’ve recognised her voice straight away, especially in the unique way she creates her characters. I think if you’d given me this book without telling me who it was by, I would have been able to guess that it was written by Helen from the first page.

In her latest psychological thriller, Helen Fitzgerald zooms in on one of the most dysfunctional families I’ve come across in crime fiction. We meet two sisters, Camille and Asha, and immediately we can see the tensions that there are between them. They’ve recently moved back in with their parents, Penny and Andeep, and right from the first few pages, I felt like I was a fly on the wall, listening in, waiting for something catastrophic to happen. It did feel as though the family were discovering more about each other for the first time, especially once a therapist gets involved.

All of Helen’s characters in this book are well rounded and I thought their individual personalities and backstories came through strongly on the page. They are people who you want to find out more about. Camille and Asha’s Dad, Andeep, is a disgraced comic, and his family are the ones who still have to put up with his jokes. The novel is also told from the point of view of their Mum, Penny, and Joy, The Therapist. I think I found the parts told from the therapist’s points of view the most intriguing. I thought it was interesting how Joy peered into the lives of Camille and Asha’s family. I immediately wanted to find out more about her right from the first line, “Unhappy families always cheered her up.” This had me hooked. What had happened to this family?

Asha and Camille’s relationship also kept me invested in the story. Helen Fitzgerald delves deep into their history, although we particularly see this from Camille’s point of view. I really like the scenes which were told through diary extracts as her voice came through really strongly. You can feel Camille’s emotions as she is describing events that have happened between her and Asha in the past. You can see clearly the rivalry that exists between them, especially from Camille’s view point. But you do also get a sense that Asha and Camille do care deeply about each other.

I really could not believe what I was reading as I reached the final closing chapters. It was such a dark and tense finale, and I’m sure I’ll be thinking about what happened at the end of this book for a long time. Helen Fitzgerald explores some difficult themes in Keep Her Sweet that bring her characters to life in rich, vivid detail, and it makes for an absorbing and an utterly compelling read. Another excellent novel from Helen Fitzgerald.

[Susan Corcoran · Rating 5 out of 5]

If there is one thing I have learned when reading Helen Fitzgerald’s books is to always expect the unexpected. The humour is always deliciously dark, her prose modern, which strong themes and characters whose voices speak to the reader, of the simmering toxicity that sits just under the surface of fractured family relationships. Few writers do it better and Keep Her Sweet is proves yet again, that in reading the synopsis, you would expect a run of the mill thriller about two sisters who simply dislike each other. But what you actually get, is a much more fascinating account of the shocking reality of families, whose connection creates murderous undercurrents.

For me one of the best things about Keep Her Sweet is the superb characterisation. The writer giving us a masterclass in delivering a story about a group of deeply dysfunctional individuals. She ensures that as readers we are kept off balance at all times, because we simply do not know what they are really capable of and that is down to the slight of hand played by Helen Fitzgerald. Not only do we have the sisters but their parents and their family therapist, each of whom seem capable of throwing a curve ball, into our perceptions of what will be the fate of each character.

Joy the family therapist was without doubt my favourite character. Not only does she play a part in the girls’ lives, but we get to find out about her own relationship with her daughter and how that affects her relationship with the sisters of the story. She is caring and acts as a counterbalance to all the other people around her. She felt inconsequential to the story at the beginning, but actually plays a pivotal role in the ensuing drama. As a character she stops the story descending into total darkness and overpowering an intelligent narrative about quite complicated relationships. She is goodness at the heart of the story and is used to highlight the not only how dysfunctional the family are, but how easy it is to misunderstand from the outside, who is the sinner and the sinned against, behind closed doors of suburbia. I loved that though she to is flawed, essentially she is a good person, but one with hidden depths.

The story is shocking and intense, but the balance between the ‘thriller’ elements and the themes of the story are pitch perfect. Throughout Helen Fitzgerald weaves into the story the idea that no family is perfect, that relationships can become as they do in real life, very strained, violent and murderous. I was chilled to the bone in places, I laughed at other parts and I adored every word she wrote. Here we have a family that appears to be in mortal decline, but you have to read to check if she has tricked us! It is not just a story about sibling rivalry, it is about the darkness that can lurk behind any door in your street!

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

As always this review also appears on my blog at: https://livemanylives.wordpress.com/

Wow. I’ve just finished Keep Her Sweet and I need a lie down, this book really puts you through it. Helen Fitzgerald always has a way of ramping up the emotions, but with this one I’m wondering whether she has been spending time with Will Carver. This book is dark, gruesomely dark, but riotously funny at the same time. Do you see what I mean?

The theme of this novel is families, in particular siblings, but also all the other relationships that shape us. It explores the notion that siblings are the closest and longest relationship that a person can have, but also that an older and younger sibling by their nature grow up in different environments as their parents are changed by the first child and that impacts the second.

It also considers the relationship between parent and child, the undying commitment of a parent towards their offspring in contrast to the expectation that can dominate the child’s perspective towards their parent, even when they have grown up and left the family home, or the resentment of both generations at their inability to escape the other. Whilst our experiences are all different, as are those of the characters in the story, they are all things that we can relate to in our own personal lives.

Penny and Andeep thought they were moving on to empty-nesting with the opportunity to refresh their relationship and live their dreams in a downsized home that would free up finances and creative juices. Camille and Asha are sisters who have left behind the innocence of older mentor and younger devotee to fully engage in emotional and physical hatred, unexpectedly pushed back together in this reduced space and craving escape. It’s a volatile mix into which family counsellor Joy steps to make her own family troubles seem better by comparison. What could possibly go right? Not a lot.

I have said before when reviewing Helen’s work that she has a knack for creating a state of heightened emotion in the reader, she writes human stories but she turbo charges them with crises, and this is no exception. You get all of the intimate interaction with her characters and the gut-wrenching impact that you are used to, but she has turned it up a few notches as this sibling rivalry turns towards ecstatic madness.

Camille has the advantage of first-person narration, whilst the others have their stories told for them, but it’s easy to form some empathy with all of them. It is both a full-on, adrenalin rushing, rollercoaster ride of a dark tragicomedy and a very relatable study of family relationships, and it is only really when you get to the end and can let your heartrate drop a little that you see just how well Helen Fitzgerald delivers both.

[Jackie McMillan · Rating 2 out of 5]

(2.5 stars)
I remember liking Ash Mountain so I bought Keep Her Sweet thinking I would enjoy it. However I found this book an incredibly hard slog. It is super violent, and shows the context for siblicide: "This was not a netball injury. It is not a ‘throw’ if the ball is still in your hands." I now remember the graphic description of someone being boiled alive in a water tank from the earlier book, and this one continues in the same vein: "I want to pull her hair till her scalp skin comes off with it."

The difference between the two books for me is in Keep Her Sweet, I hated the entire cast of characters: "four fucked people fucking each other over." I hated the parents who checked out on having a role to prevent sibling violence and blamed their adult children ruining their attempt to downsize for their relationship dramas: "Penny didn’t want to have sex with him; she didn’t want to divorce him either. She wanted to kill him." There is a particularly terrible scene where Penny and Andeep are making a passive aggressive influencer video while ignoring the sibling violence going on in the background because they're both so self-absorbed.

I hated the family counsellor, who uses her work to feel better about the dysfunction in her own family: "Unhappy families didn’t seem to be cheering her up anymore." She oversteps boundaries left and right instead of fulfilling her duty of care. I hated the religious group leaders who exploited one of the sibling's family trauma, then used the other sibling to fix the problem they created by doing so.

And I hated the siblings, both first-born and second-born. However, the primary victim's later behaviour (however extreme) must to be understood within the context of being the primary victim of ongoing violent family abuse. Even with that in mind, you don't come out liking Camille much more than Asha though: "I forgot how an innocently insincere ‘dear’ or ‘love’ could provoke my sister. She’d ripped up several birthday cards due to hypocritical wording."

Probably the only thing I liked about this book was that it drew attention to the way we, as a society, excuse and minimise violence between siblings: "It was sister stuff, sibling rivalry. It was natural, funny even. Everyone laughs about sibling fights." We need to stop doing that, but I doubt this book is going to significantly add to that conversation because it's written in such a violent way it's too easy to dismiss. Write about sibling violence that wouldn't make the news.

[Sharon Rimmelzwaan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another Orenda published book by Helen Fitzgerald this time. I have read her work and have enjoyed every book I have read. Keep Her Sweet is her latest release, which I was so looking forward to read.

We are introduced to the Moloney-Singh family. Parents, Penny and Andeep planned to enjoy their new 'empty nest'. They downsized after their daughters left home. What they didn't prepare for was both of them to fly back home...to a smaller nest than ever. With less room, tempers begin to rise and the tensions are increasing. Then the escalating violence spills over. A therapist is hired, Joy, a woman who has no idea just how fractured this family is. She finds herself caught up in the fires that the family consistently set that is racing to an outcome that noone ever wants to see.

Told from multiple perspectives, which serve to accelerate the suspense of the story which does crank up as the plot unfolds before your eyes. Keep Her Sweet is a book that I thought I had already knew how it would all go. Then I started reading and let me tell you, no, it's not what I thought. This story is more shocking and so much more sinister than anything I expected. Alongside this there is such dark humour too. Which I appreciated and it made the book even more addictive to me.

The family are not all likeable people, in fact, I would go so far as to say only Camille is the closest to being normal. Asha, her sister is another story. A manipulative and vicious woman who uses Camille as a whipping board quite frequently. She is such a great hateful character.

Helen Fitzgerald has created such a dysfunctional family. The vile emotions are almost palpable as the rage, bitterness and fear pour of the pages. I was constantly changing my mind about them all. One minute I didn't have a clue about the way their heads worked and the next I got it all.

Such skilful writing made this almost a hypnotic and compelling read. At times I almost felt that it was akin to a horror movie. The ones you have a cushion in front of your face but you know you need to keep watching. If only to see the terrible consequences that you feel in your gut will happen.

With themes of obsession, betrayal and addiction. This is one unique story of a family who is rapidly spiraling downhill. An intense, claustrophobic and addictive psychologal thriller that is so well written that you can't stop reading...even though you know it's going to end in some sort of tragedy!

[Sasha ★ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Everyone in this book is an unlikeable twat and all of them act like idiots.

Okay, to go into more detail: The story follows a family who apparently live in Australia (I had no idea this was set in Australia, I thought it was in Scotland the entire time since Helen Fitzgerald is Scottish and her previous book I've read is set there), a married couple hoping to rekindle their marriage but plans are thrown into disarray when their two adult daughters, Asha and Camille, come back to stay with them.

Question: Why were Penny's part of the book even there? All she does is incessantly whine about her self-inflicted problems. I get what Helen Fitzgerald was trying to go for but it didn't really work, I have no idea why Penny and Andeep even got married or what about their marriage Penny feels is even worth saving. Also, the fact she sees Asha assaulting Camille multiple times - including in front of two other eyewitnesses - and yet dismisses it as Camille "winding her up", is absolutely ludicrous. Andeep is similarly awful and one-dimensional, a supposed outrageous professional comedian who thinks toilet humour is funny. You also have Jean, the family therapist, and her sections involve her smugly judging other people for having terrible problems, yet she's constantly bailing out her meth addict daughter and babying her. I ended up skipping huge chunks of Jean's sections because they were so damn boring, she just iterated the same thing over and over.

Camille's sections were the ones I was most interested in, but her motives leave me confused - she lives in a family where nobody sticks up for her and she's constantly at the beck and call of her violent, tyrannical older sister who assaults her multiple times, but for some reason she doesn't just leave her parent's house and get the fuck away from Asha - instead she scribbles in her diary, bemoans how she always takes Asha's abuse and apparently it never occurs to her to call the cops on her or...do anything?? (Also she has this really weird phobia about belly buttons, I was confused about it but most of this book is confusing, there are like six subplots going on at once in a book that isn't even 300 pages.)

Overall, a frenetic, confusing mess and even the murder felt way too illogical and the characters are far too casual and matter-of-fact about it for it to really make up for how ridiculous the rest of the novel is.

Rating: 1.5 Stars

[Lynsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Keep Her Sweet’ is beguiling from the offset. It was so compelling that I stayed up till 2 am to finish and boy was it worth it. That ending! What did I just read?! It's funny, it's surreal, it's dark, it's taut, it's captivating, and it's has ‘a rabbit caught headlights’ moments, but most of all it addresses real issues. Ones that readers will be able to identify as relating to them but slightly exaggerated to highlight the absurdity of it all. It covers family breakdown, addiction, sibling rivalry, jealousy, sibling love and the worst of these may be - betrayal and it's an echo that reverberates through the pages! It is truly addictive and I am now so grateful to my normal family. Well, it's not that normal as the MIL lives with us haha...

The Moloney-Singhs are one messed up family. Penny and Andeep have moved to the country now that their two children have flown the best. But alas - Camille (The Second Born) has returned and is actively not searching for employment or really interested in anything. Asha the eldest daughter is on house arrest with an ankle tag as she had an affair with her married pastor and became a stalker and hit him over the head with some coffee thing! This leads to a lot of tension and Camille asks that they do family therapy - enter Joy (The Queen) in her 70’s a British ex-pat in Australia with a love to fixing broken families. Oh, this is not going to be easy!!!

I think the only character which I liked was Joy! Hardly any redeemable features between the lot of them. But then I don't think you are supposed to like them, however Helen manages to tease out the good and bad in these horrible people in such a relevant manner that you begin to emphasise with them and even root for certain characters. Whatever your feelings towards this messed up bunch they hold the reader's attention, I was truly fascinated. However, I think I might be emphasizing with a character no one else is… But that the joy of narratives like these is that it is subjective and if everyone felt the same then the author would have failed in their job and that's not something that Helen would ever do!

Give it a try readers!

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helen Fitzgerald just keeps on getting better and better and her latest novel, Keep Her Sweet, is a dark, sharp and disturbing thriller that explores twisted family ties, toxic relationships and the thin line between love and hate readers will definitely not want to miss.

With their girls having at long last left home, Penny and Andeep are looking forward to enjoying their empty nest and to this new chapter in their lives. Moving to the countryside, Penny and Andeep plan to enjoy their quiet time relishing the peace and quiet and falling in love all over again. They cannot wait to leave their old lives behind and start over – only for their two daughters Asha and Camille to join them in their tiny little house. Tempers immediately begin to fray and tensions soon start to rise. With there being no way to make money in the countryside and fewer opportunities to decompress and blow off steam, the two girls find themselves turning on each other – and things soon turn ugly!

When an argument escalates and Asha ends up injuring Camille, a family therapist is called in who dismisses this as a mere case of sibling rivalry that got a little out of hand. But what the family therapist didn’t realize was that their fight was powered by an intense feud that has been simmering for years and years. The sisters have reached a point of no return and the next step isn’t going to be a mere disagreement, but cold-blooded murder…

Helen Fitzgerald is such a brilliant talent! In her books, she delivers all the shocks, chills and twists and turns which readers expect from crime thrillers, but as in the case of Keep Her Sweet, she sprinkles plenty of dark humour to keep them absolutely glued to the pages of her book.

A complex, intricate and tension-filled page-turner that is unpredictable, engrossing and highly enjoyable, Helen Fitzgerald’s Keep Her Sweet is a brilliant domestic thriller readers will not want to miss.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[Kerry https://likeherdingcatsblog.wordpress.com Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bit of sibling rivalry and some occasional rough play is a normal part of family life and never hurt anyone right? I’m not so sure….. Categorised as a thriller I’d say this book has plenty of dark humour for readers who like
Keep Her Sweet is the story of the dysfunctional Moloney-Singh family and their journey to try and repair some of the issues between them – particularly those of Camille and Asha.
Helen Fitzgerald has such a unique writing style and her clever use of a multi first person narrative works so well. I was sucked in from the first pages and could stop. Each character’s narrative was raw and real and each chapter revealed just a little more insight or information to entice me further. It was as though I was privy to private things that I shouldn’t have been seeing but were too juicy and fascinating to walk away from.
The narrative is told from The Mother, The Second Born and The Therapist and each chapter felt really intimate and private – like reading a diary that you’re not supposed to.
The family were as dysfunctional as they come and each character in the family had a major flaw…or two. None of them were likable and I love this! Characters like this who crawl under your skin and make you feel strong emotions take some really clever writing skills and Helen Fitzgerald nails it! The family irritated me, sickened me and made me down-right annoyed but I never stopped hoping they would develop some redeeming qualities or come to the realisation that their behaviours were toxic. It shouldn’t be fun but it is so deliciously dark and compulsive – I was obsessed with this family.
As tempers flare, the home becomes more claustrophobic and the feelings flood out, things reach an intense and breath-holding climax that had me on the edge of my seat.
Nobody should have this much fun watching a bunch of cruel, ignorant, spoilt and f***ed up people but by goodness I did!
Buy it! Read it!