CHARACTER
The Better Sister: A Novelby Alafair Burke

Chloe Taylor

Chloe Taylor

Quick Facts

Who They Are

Bold, polished, and relentlessly competent, Chloe Taylor is a public feminist success story who has built an immaculate life and brand—until a murder fractures the image. As Eve’s editor-in-chief, she curates discourse about women’s power while privately managing a marriage curdled by resentment and violence, and a family history she’s rewritten to survive. Through Chloe’s gaze, the novel probes the costs of ambition and the moral contortions required to protect the people you love, especially within the tight knots of Family Secrets and Lies, the volatility of Sisterhood and Rivalry, and the fracture between Public Image vs. Private Reality.

Personality & Traits

Chloe’s identity rests on control—of her schedule, her story, and her reflection in other people’s eyes. But the novel repeatedly forces her to choose between being “right” in public and being truthful in private. When those aims diverge, Chloe’s defining qualities surface: a cold-seeming pragmatism that’s actually protective love, an image-consciousness sharpened by online scrutiny, and a willingness to sacrifice status for Ethan once denial is no longer possible.

  • Ambitious and mission-driven: She revives Eve and wins the Press for the People Award for the “Them Too” series, measuring self-worth through professional relevance and impact. Her pride in the magazine frames how devastating it is to later weaponize her own reputation during the trial.
  • Organizing as self-defense: A “creature of habit” who believes routines are the key to productivity and happiness (Chapter 2). Her rituals function like armor—habits that keep her together until grief and suspicion splinter them after Adam’s murder (Chapter 6).
  • Image-conscious, even self-punishing: She doom-scrolls Twitter and Poppit, internalizing trolls who call her “a little thick” (Chapter 2). This fixation shows how public-facing feminism can be policed by the same misogyny it resists—and how Chloe’s need to control optics becomes a trap.
  • Pragmatic, emotionally contained: Police note her composure at the crime scene; Adam jokes about her “not having it” face (Chapter 6). Her restraint reads as coldness to outsiders—but becomes a tactic for survival and, later, for strategy in court.
  • Fiercely protective: She covers for Ethan when he brings a gun to school and later lies on the stand to save him (Chapter 33). Protection—not perfection—becomes her core value once the stakes crystallize.
  • Public beauty, private pressure: Early forties, heart-shaped face, shoulder-length dark hair (Chapters 1–2). Her self-monitoring (“six-pack” not long ago; Chapter 1) underscores the external pressure on women whose bodies are treated as public property.

Character Journey

Chloe begins as the “better sister”—the one with clean lines and clean hands—whose story makes sense so long as the mess stays offstage. Adam’s murder detonates that narrative. At first she tries to manage the crisis like a media problem—control the message, minimize exposure. But as evidence points to Ethan, those tactics become immoral or useless. Reunited with Nicky, she’s forced to reexamine the old betrayal that put Adam in her life and estranged her from her sister. The trial is her crucible: to save Ethan, she confesses her affair with Jake Summer and finally names the abuse she’s endured, making her private pain public and aligning herself with the women she champions in print—collapsing the distance between advocacy and lived experience under Domestic Abuse and Its Legacy. By the end, Chloe relinquishes the addiction to external approval. She chooses family over vindication—protecting Nicky and concealing the full truth—accepting that love and survival often require morally compromised choices. The “better sister” becomes a woman who understands that goodness isn’t clarity; it’s responsibility.

Key Relationships

  • Adam Macintosh: Publicly, Adam boosts Chloe’s career; privately, he resents it and becomes violent. His death forces Chloe to reconcile the man she defended with the man she feared, shifting her from brand management to truth-telling—even when the truth implicates her choices and desires.

  • Nicky Macintosh: The sister she once defined herself against—“reckless” where Chloe is rigorous. Living shoulder-to-shoulder through grief reveals their mirrored histories with Adam and their parents, transforming rivalry into solidarity as Chloe ultimately chooses Nicky’s safety over punitive justice.

  • Ethan Macintosh: Both her stepson and nephew, Ethan is the axis of Chloe’s ethics. Her maternal loyalty drives her to risk perjury, reputation, and career. Loving Ethan turns Chloe’s pragmatism into courage, converting image maintenance into active protection.

  • Jake Summer: A refuge from danger and a mirror to Chloe’s loneliness. Their affair exposes what her marriage lacks—care and safety—but during the trial, she weaponizes his proximity to manufacture doubt, sacrificing intimacy for Ethan’s freedom.

  • Catherine Lancaster: Mentor and model of professional poise. Catherine’s “stay ahead of the narrative” ethos crystallizes the seductive logic of control that Chloe must ultimately abandon when survival demands vulnerability instead of spin.

Defining Moments

Chloe’s story is a series of choices that braid love with betrayal, each one tightening the knot she must later untie.

  • The Met Gala betrayal (“Fourteen Years Earlier”): Choosing Adam over Nicky inaugurates years of Betrayal and Loyalty calculus. It buys Chloe a future with Adam—and a debt to her sister that the novel will collect.
  • Finding Adam’s body (Chapter 6): The inciting trauma that exposes the fault lines in her marriage and persona. Chloe’s controlled response reads as suspicious to others, underscoring the cost of her emotional containment.
  • Testifying at Ethan’s trial (Chapter 33): She detonates her public image—admitting the affair and naming the abuse—to reframe motive and create reasonable doubt. It’s the moment advocacy and autobiography converge.
  • Discovering Adam’s file (Chapter 36): She uncovers his notes on corruption at the firm, implicating Bill Braddock. The file offers an alternate suspect—and a moral dilemma: justice for Adam or safety for Ethan.
  • Nicky’s confession (Chapter 39): Learning Nicky killed Adam to protect them both forces Chloe’s final choice. She opts for sisterly protection over disclosure, completing her transformation from image-keeper to guardian.

Essential Quotes

I betrayed my sister while standing on the main stairs of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a beaded Versace gown (borrowed) and five-inch stiletto heels (never worn again).
— Chloe Taylor, “Fourteen Years Earlier”

This sentence fuses glamour with guilt, turning a red-carpet moment into an origin story of betrayal. The detail about borrowed couture undercuts the fantasy, foreshadowing how Chloe’s perfect life is built on precarious loans—emotional and moral.

Boring? To some people, sure. But I was convinced that routines and rituals were the key to both my happiness and my productivity, which—let’s face it—were interrelated.
— Chloe Taylor, Chapter 2

Chloe casts ritual as both psychological ballast and professional engine. The line reveals how her sense of self depends on control—and why the murder, which obliterates routine, destabilizes her identity.

He had “sold out to the man,” as he called it, by joining Rives & Braddock. And he hated it. Every day, I could see how much he hated answering to a client. He wanted to be one of the good guys again. But instead, he hated his job, and he blamed me for it.
— Chloe Taylor, Chapter 5

Here Chloe diagnoses Adam’s grievance narrative: compromised ideals recast as her fault. The passage captures the gendered resentment simmering beneath their marriage and previews how professional power can become domestically dangerous.

Ethan spoke a truth that I never wanted known: my husband, Adam, was beating me.
— Chloe Taylor, Chapter 33

This is the hinge of Chloe’s transformation—the private truth made public. Once the abuse is spoken aloud, Chloe’s loyalty to image yields to loyalty to Ethan, and her advocacy aligns with lived reality.

I retaliated by having an affair.
— Chloe Taylor, Chapter 33

The starkness of “retaliated” rejects romantic euphemism, acknowledging moral compromise without self-exoneration. It crystallizes Chloe’s ethos at the trial: tell the ugliest version of the truth if it saves her son.