The Locked Ward

Do you like twin stories? If the answer is no, then this may not be the book for you. 

Georgia Cartwright has been brought up in the lofty circles of the elite and powerful. Adopted and shunned by her mother Honey who favored her natural born daughter Annabelle, she now stands accused of murdering this sister in a fit of jealousy and is placed in a locked ward until her mental competency for trial is determined.

Mandy (Amanda) Ravenel is a bartender raised as an only child by loving parents in more modest circumstances. Her life is stable and predictable until her phone rings one morning with news she could never have imagined:

Georgia is not only her twin, but she’s asking for her help to prove she didn’t murder Annabelle.

This is where my buy-in faltered. Long-lost twin or not, I struggled to believe Mandy would risk life and limb amongst powerful threats that would want to silence her for the sake of a woman she literally just met.

Don’t get me wrong, I kept turning those pages and listening along while January LaVoy expertly narrated the unfolding drama, so I was definitely invested in where the story was going. The short chapters flew by, creating the “just one more” effect that I love in books, and Pekkanen’s writing is very good, so no issues with that. 

My main issue was simply that stories about twins or rich and powerful politically-connected people behaving badly or misusing their influence just don’t excite me much. I can turn on the news and see abuses of power every day that I WISH were just fiction.

The best part of the book for me was Georgia’s experience inside the locked ward. That part felt terribly menacing! If the whole book was about a character in those circumstances, I’d have been hooked. It felt genuinely threatening. Mandy’s efforts on the outside in trying to clear Georgia fell flat for me and had none of that nail-biting tension, nor did the ending reveal and the epilogue, both of which felt a bit predictable and anticlimactic.

The story is a decent, well-written story, so the issue is just one of what kind of plots I prefer. While I enjoyed the story to a point, this plot didn’t work as well for me, but there’s definitely an audience for these kinds of characters and their stories. I’d encourage you to read others' reviews before you decide. The audio is very good if you do try this!

★★★ ½ 

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press, NetGalley and author Sarah Pekkanen for this digital ARC and Macmillan Audio for the ALC to honestly review. This is out August 5, 2025.