Discussion Guide
CLOSE TO MY HEART YOU'LL BE... SISTERS FOREVER YOU AND ME. Alexandra Van Ness has the perfect life. She lives in an idyllic resort town tucked away in the Rocky Mountains, shares a designer loft with her handsome boyfriend, Chase, and has her dream job working in child protection. Every day, Alex goes above and beyond to save children at risk.
But when her long-lost sister, Ruth, unexpectedly shows up at her door, Alex's perfect life is upended. Growing up, Ruth was always the troublemaker, pulling Alex into her messes, and this time will be no different. Still, Alex will help Ruth under one condition: we will never, ever, talk about the past. But when trouble befalls a local child, both women are forced to confront the secrets they've promised to keep buried.
Utterly engrossing and claustrophobic, Hurry Home is a tantalizing reflection of the chain-and-shackles relationship between sisters that asks: what lines wouldn't you cross for your own?
Roz Nay's debut novel, Our Little Secret, was a national bestseller in Canada, won the Douglas Kennedy Prize for best foreign thriller in France, and was nominated for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Mystery and the Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award. Roz has lived and worked in Africa, Australia, the US, and the UK. She now lives in British Columbia, Canada, with her husband and two children.
Discussion Questions:
1
2
Is this a story about
What might the writer be
the enduring bond of
exploring about the relationship
sisterhood or the
between a person’s past and their
constrictive shackles
present? How do memory and
of it?
guilt play a part in this?
3 Who were you cheering for at the start
5
of the book, the middle, and the end?
4
Alex took Ruth into her home in her time of need, granted, she had ulterior motives. What would you do
If you were in Alex or Ruth's shoes, how
if your troublemaker
do you think you'd react to the death of a
sibling dropped in
sibling? How would it impact your
one day with stolen
relationships with the sister you have left?
drugs and money?
2
6 How does Hurry Home deal with established beliefs about family, love, parenthood and the protection of children?
7
8
Alex, Ruth, and Minerva all have a different
Is Hurry Home a
approach to parenting/child protection and set
tragedy? If not,
the bar at varying heights. Is there a correct
what other kind
height, do you think? Whose approach did you
of story is it?
most align with?
9
10
What motivates the
With the exception of her
villain(s) in Hurry
brother, whose life do you
Home? Is she a
think Alex ruins the most?
psychopath, narcissist, sociopath, or something
a) father
else? How does this
b) mother
make her similar or
c) Ruth
different to villains we
d) Chase
usually see in
e) Sully
psychological thrillers?
f) all of the above, she’s a wrecking ball