The Storm Sister

The second installment in Lucinda Riley's Seven Sisters series follows Ally (Alcyone) D'Aplièse, a professional sailor and the second of six sisters adopted as infants by a mysterious, wealthy man they call Pa Salt. Raised at Atlantis, a château on a private peninsula of Lake Geneva, and cared for by their devoted guardian Marina (known as Ma), the sisters know nothing of their biological origins.

The novel opens in June 2007 with Ally aboard a yacht in the Aegean Sea, recalling how she fell in love with Theo Falys-Kings, a celebrated skipper known as "the King of the Seas." They met a year earlier at a Caribbean regatta, and during recent training for the Cyclades Regatta in Greece, Theo confessed his feelings. Over several days alone on his yacht, the Neptune, they became lovers.

While sailing near the island of Delos, they spot Pa Salt's superyacht, the Titan, but it flees without responding to radio contact. Theo also identifies a yacht belonging to Kreeg Eszu, a billionaire tycoon, anchored nearby. The next morning, Ally switches on her phone to find frantic messages from her sisters: Pa Salt has died of a heart attack. Theo comforts her and books a flight to Geneva.

At Atlantis, Ally reunites with her sisters: Maia, CeCe, Star, Tiggy, and Electra. Maia explains that Pa Salt's body was buried at sea per his wishes, and Ally realizes she inadvertently witnessed the private funeral. Pa Salt's lawyer, Georg Hoffman, explains the inheritance: a modest trust income and Atlantis preserved as their home for life. He leads the sisters to a golden armillary sphere, an ancient astronomical model, installed in Pa Salt's private garden. Each sister's name is engraved alongside coordinates and a Greek inscription. A seventh band reads "Merope," the missing seventh sister Pa Salt never adopted. Georg distributes sealed letters from their father.

Ally's letter praises her fearlessness and directs her to coordinates on the sphere and a book by Jens Halvorsen in Pa Salt's study. Pa Salt hints he may have steered her toward sailing when music was an equally viable path. Enclosed is a small brown frog figurine he calls one of his most precious possessions. In the study, Ally finds the book, Grieg, Solveig, og Jeg (Grieg, Solveig, and I), a biography written in Norwegian, and arranges a translation. Her quotation from the armillary sphere reads, "In moments of weakness, you will find your greatest strength" (58). Before departing, Maia confides that Zed Eszu, Kreeg's son, caused her years of isolation, a connection that disturbs Ally.

Reunited with Theo, Ally and the crew win the Cyclades Regatta. On the Greek island of Anafi, Theo proposes and Ally accepts. In London, Ally meets Theo's mother, Celia, who clings to her son at parting as if sensing something ominous. They travel to the Isle of Wight for the Fastnet Race, one of the most dangerous offshore races in the world, which severe weather delays for the first time in its history. Theo makes Ally promise to obey if he orders her off the boat. During extreme conditions, Ally is injured, and Theo orders her ashore at Weymouth Harbour. Ally is furious but complies, watching from a window at dawn as the Tigress sails back into the storm.

At the Fastnet control center in Cowes, Ally learns that a "man overboard" call has been received from the Tigress. Crewmate Rob Bellamy explains what happened: A wave hurled him overboard, and Theo dove in after him, towing Rob to a safety buoy before a second wave dragged Theo under. Rob was rescued; Theo's body was recovered an hour later. Devastated, Ally retreats to Celia's London home. Celia reveals that Theo left a will and letters before the race, suggesting he had a premonition. His letter is loving and humorous, bequeathing Ally his property on Anafi and the Neptune and asking her to "be HAPPY" (113). At Theo's funeral, Ally plays a piece on her flute as he requested and meets Theo's estranged father, Peter, who asks to see her before leaving London.

Ally withdraws from Olympic sailing trials, unable to face the water. She discovers a voice mail Theo left from the Tigress an hour before his death, telling her he loved her and that removing her from the boat had nothing to do with her abilities. She begins reading the translated Halvorsen biography.

The historical narrative follows Anna Landvik, an eighteen-year-old farm girl near Heddal in rural Norway in 1875, who possesses an exceptional singing voice. Professor Franz Bayer, a music teacher from Christiania (as Oslo was then known), takes her to the capital to train and arranges for her to sing offstage as the secret voice of Solveig in the 1876 premiere of Ibsen's Peer Gynt while the lead actress mimes. In the orchestra, young flutist Jens Halvorsen plays the first bars of Grieg's "Morning Mood" and becomes obsessed with the mysterious singer. He pursues Anna, but she resists because of his reputation as a womanizer. They eventually fall in love and flee to Leipzig, where Jens studies at the conservatory before abandoning Anna for a wealthy patroness. Destitute and alone, Anna gives birth to a stillborn daughter. Grieg rescues her, becoming her patron and, the narrative implies, her lover. Under his guidance, her singing career flourishes across Europe. In 1884, Grieg sends the now-destitute Jens back to Anna. She takes him back, and they settle in Bergen. Jens's biography, written after Anna's death in 1907, thanks her for forgiving him.

Ally flies to Oslo, where she confirms that her coordinates point to the site of the old Christiania Theater. In Bergen, she recognizes replicas of her brown frog in the Grieg Museum gift shop; Grieg carried the original as a good-luck talisman. She meets Willem Caspari, a concert pianist performing at the museum's concert hall, who persuades her to perform at a recital. The museum curator introduces her to Thom Halvorsen, Jens and Anna's great-great-grandson and a violinist with the Bergen Philharmonic. At Froskehuset ("The Frog House"), the Halvorsen family home, Ally and Thom discover they share the same birth year, red-gold hair, and uncanny similarities. Thom tells her the devastating history of his grandfather Pip, a composer whose wife, Karine, was killed during the German invasion of Norway in April 1940. Pip took his own life that same day, leaving behind an orphaned infant son, Felix, and a lost piano concerto.

Ally identifies a manuscript Thom found in the Froskehuset attic as Pip's lost Hero Concerto, dated 1939. A doctor confirms Ally is pregnant with Theo's child. She tells Thom, who already suspects they are blood relatives and is delighted. Thom takes Ally to meet his father, Felix, a gifted pianist whose life has been shaped by alcohol addiction. Felix later contacts Ally privately and reveals that Thom's mother, Martha, gave birth to twins, a girl and a boy, and gave the girl up for adoption. A DNA test confirms Ally and Thom are fraternal twins and Felix is their father.

Thom shares a deeper secret: Love letters hidden at Froskehuset confirm that Grieg, not Jens, likely fathered the Halvorsen patriarch, Horst. They agree to keep this private. Felix already knows, remarking that "it's not where you come from genetically but who you become" (483). When the orchestrator Thom had hired to prepare the concerto for the December Grieg Centenary Concert falls behind schedule, Ally secretly brings Pip's concerto to Felix, who orchestrates it brilliantly in three weeks. She then visits Celia in England to share the pregnancy news and to scatter Theo's ashes in the Solent with Celia and Peter.

The Grieg Centenary Concert takes place on December 7, 2007, at the Grieg Hall in Bergen. Before the performance, Ally introduces Thom to Star and notes with amusement how struck he is by her beauty. Ally plays the opening bars of "Morning Mood" on the flute, thinking of Pa Salt, Theo, and her unborn child. Felix performs Pip's Hero Concerto to a standing ovation and dedicates it to his late father and to his children, his first public acknowledgment of Thom and Ally. A brief epilogue shifts to Star's perspective: She resolves to find her own voice, then spots a mysterious figure in the departing crowd and chases the person into the December night, losing sight of them as the novel ends on an unresolved note.