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Blue Sisters
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Fiction (2024)Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister's death in this unforgettable story of grief, identity, and the complexities of family.
The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.
But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize the greatest secrets they've been keeping might not have been from each other, but from themselves.
The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.
But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize the greatest secrets they've been keeping might not have been from each other, but from themselves.
354 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 23, 2024
22404 people are currently reading
577514 people want to read
About the author
Coco Mellors
2 books7,341 followersCoco Mellors is a writer from London. She moved to New York as a teenager and received her MFA in Fiction from New York University. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Cleopatra and Frankenstein and Blue Sisters. Her novels have been translated into over twenty-five languages and are currently being adapted for television. Her non-fiction writing has appeared in Vogue, The Stack and the New York Times's Modern Love column. She lives in New York with her husband and son.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37,939 reviews
July 9, 2025
some of the best things in the world:
- sisters
- books with pretty covers
- most anticipated books living up to your expectations.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C5BPZz2rVAq/
i am a siblings girl.
the great love of my life is one i've had almost the whole time. my sisters and my brother are now and forever, since the day they were born, the favorites, the most important people to me.
so when i heard that the creator of one of my favorite characters was writing about the relationship that has defined my time on earth, i was both nervous and excited.
fortunately this is a really good book.
no depiction of sisterhood may ever feel as wonderful as mine does to me, but this book was swirling with emotion. its depictions of feeling and of place were striking: i'm not sure how the author has the twofold ability to make you feel like you are in a lovingly restored house in hampstead, spinning with anger, or in a crumbling cabin upstate confused and needing your mother, or in an atelier in paris about to throw up, but it made for a consuming and grounding read.
oddly for an author whose characters have stuck with me, that was a bit where it lost me this time around. while the sisters' dynamics, feelings, and even homes felt so very real, i didn't feel the same for their selves.
but you can't win them all, and with this book, you win most.
bottom line: i stay winning.
------------------------
tbr review
well. one of my most anticipated books of the year, from the author of one of the most exciting debuts in recent years, is about my favorite topic (sisters) has the prettiest cover i’ve ever seen in my life (look at it) and is now in my possession.
i’m not sure what happens now but it might be spontaneous combustion.
(thank you to the publisher for the arc!)
- sisters
- books with pretty covers
- most anticipated books living up to your expectations.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C5BPZz2rVAq/
i am a siblings girl.
the great love of my life is one i've had almost the whole time. my sisters and my brother are now and forever, since the day they were born, the favorites, the most important people to me.
so when i heard that the creator of one of my favorite characters was writing about the relationship that has defined my time on earth, i was both nervous and excited.
fortunately this is a really good book.
no depiction of sisterhood may ever feel as wonderful as mine does to me, but this book was swirling with emotion. its depictions of feeling and of place were striking: i'm not sure how the author has the twofold ability to make you feel like you are in a lovingly restored house in hampstead, spinning with anger, or in a crumbling cabin upstate confused and needing your mother, or in an atelier in paris about to throw up, but it made for a consuming and grounding read.
oddly for an author whose characters have stuck with me, that was a bit where it lost me this time around. while the sisters' dynamics, feelings, and even homes felt so very real, i didn't feel the same for their selves.
but you can't win them all, and with this book, you win most.
bottom line: i stay winning.
------------------------
tbr review
well. one of my most anticipated books of the year, from the author of one of the most exciting debuts in recent years, is about my favorite topic (sisters) has the prettiest cover i’ve ever seen in my life (look at it) and is now in my possession.
i’m not sure what happens now but it might be spontaneous combustion.
(thank you to the publisher for the arc!)
April 22, 2024
remarkably fine. idk, this book thinks it is innovative and important and I would have to disagree. The last quarter of the book is leagues above the rest of it. Tired of reading this “weird girl” lit about depressed beautiful models and manhattanites who take too many drugs and have too much meaningless sex. I just don’t care, it’s been done — find something new moshfegh wannabes. final thoughts are just: meh. The writing itself is pretty good, I was engaged I guess but yet, upon finishing, I feel no sense of satisfaction of accomplishment. It exists and I read it, I guess. 2.5/5 stars
June 17, 2024
I knew this was going to be a 5 star read from the very first paragraph and it somehow just got better and better
Gorgeous writing with meticulous attention to detail; characters so real they walk off the page; dialogue so believable you forget there’s a page between you and the characters talking
Coco Mellors you’ve done it again……. but somehow even better!!!
Gorgeous writing with meticulous attention to detail; characters so real they walk off the page; dialogue so believable you forget there’s a page between you and the characters talking
Coco Mellors you’ve done it again……. but somehow even better!!!
May 29, 2024
unnecessary mention of an isra*li man left a bad taste in my mouth for the rest of this book yeah no thanks
July 9, 2024
humongous review to come
there it is:
when i first read cleopatra&frankenstein, i saw that there were some... problematic moments, but i still enjoyed it. on the reread, i noticed the worst parts much more - the cringe writing, bizarre characterization, weird obsession with specific countries/ethicities... and after reading blue sisters, i am crestfallen to report that all these worst parts of c&p are pretty much 100% of blue sisters.
overall, there was much to digest. the concept seemed intruigning, especially to me as the oldest of three sisters and four siblings in total, but i think it is absolutely treated in the most obvious ways possible. wow, the oldest sister being a control freak overachiever? never done before! (if i want a story like this, i just read my own journal) youngest sister being the wild child? crazy. of course, middle sister being an accomplished boxer is hm, not an existing trope, but it truly means just one thing: she is strong. coco mellors, you queen of nuance. like, some metaphors here are just too advanced for my silly brain - for example, they're called the blue sisters because they're... sad. insane twist. and then there's of course the dead sister, whose smile lit up a room and all children loved her. her condition - endometriosis - is a very worthwhile topic, but i found her surface-level characterization made it all fall flat. i have no sense of her as a person whatsoever, and i think it wouldve been more interesting if literally any other sister died instead.
the cringe writing which already reared its head in c&f here takes full force. ah yes, the lament of the city being the police sirens. "drugs, terrible things" is a direct quote. i mean, hard to disagree. "wolfish grin" was mentioned to often i was half-heartedly expecting green orbs and harry styles to make an appearance too. it just all smells of fanfiction too strong, and not in a good way.
the characterization of all the sisters falls incredibly flat, and their mother is even more cartoonish. weirdly enough, they all don't feel like a family - coco mellors is hitting me over the head with the sentences about how much they love each other, but she never shows it. i also don't see any similarities or influence over each other between them. like, me and my siblings are very different people, but i've been told it's very obvious we're related - we have the same sense of humour, similar interests, we talk the same way. nothing of the sort happens in blue sisters. they feel more like grief acquitances than sisters.
moreover, mellors doesnt say anything interesting about sisterhood. she actually just lures you in with this premise and then gives a book ostensibly about addicition, but even there, she doesn't have anything fresh or interesting to say - like, addiction bad. AA good. we get it. she also doesn't show any other coping mechanisms beside AA, which is... curious. to say the least.
the only good part for me was the ending, which gave at least a bit of katharsis, but an probably undeserved one. i mightve been just projecting my own feelings there.
thats more or less my main takes, HOWEVER, this would not be a helena review if i didn't mention the plotline that bothered me the most - and it truly read like a plotline genetically bred to infuriate me, as it combined a problematic depicition of slavic people (much like myself) and a romanticization of a teacher-student relationship. light spoilers ahead.
so, one of the sisters, bonnie, is a boxer, and her trainer is russian. and listen - i am as anti-russian as any other polish bitch around here. HOWEVER it is fucking insane that miss coco mellors wrote this characters that cannot speak basic english despite living what, 25+ years in the us. "you want fight?" "is difficult this life"??? hello?? does she think primitive little eastern europeans are unable to learn a language in this time, while of course one of her perfect little blond americqn protagonists picks up japanese in three years like it's nothing? what infuriated me even more was this weird-ass moment when pavel (the russian trainer) says they dont have cheesecake in russia? aha??? cheesecake is literally one of the most popular, if not the most popular, dessert in eastern europe, and some even claim it was invented in poland??? coco. google is free. please use it sometimes. i know from your depiction of poland in c&f that you're allergic to it and you use your woman intuition only to guide your portrayal of eastern europe, but im begging you. just one time, google if the primitive slavs you like fetishizing so much have cheesecake. or, should i say it like pavel? me stupid slavic woman have cheesecake?
and then when pavel, who was 30 upon meeting bonnie, and bonnie, who was 15 upon meeting pavel, get together, it's seen as a great romantic moment. girls, i thought we moved past that in the discourse. like, what the actual fuck. as a slavic victim of grooming, i felt double hate-crimed by the entire pavel storyline.
on the topic of weird cultural fixations, which sadly continue from c&f, there's of course a phonetic depiction of jamaican accent in peachy's scenes, but that i leave to discuss to someone more qualified.
all in all, coco mellors once again proves - sometimes the most oppressed person of earth can be a beautiful rich (oh, im sorry, they're allegedly poor. they OWN only two properties in new york.....) able-bodied woman in the us......
there it is:
when i first read cleopatra&frankenstein, i saw that there were some... problematic moments, but i still enjoyed it. on the reread, i noticed the worst parts much more - the cringe writing, bizarre characterization, weird obsession with specific countries/ethicities... and after reading blue sisters, i am crestfallen to report that all these worst parts of c&p are pretty much 100% of blue sisters.
overall, there was much to digest. the concept seemed intruigning, especially to me as the oldest of three sisters and four siblings in total, but i think it is absolutely treated in the most obvious ways possible. wow, the oldest sister being a control freak overachiever? never done before! (if i want a story like this, i just read my own journal) youngest sister being the wild child? crazy. of course, middle sister being an accomplished boxer is hm, not an existing trope, but it truly means just one thing: she is strong. coco mellors, you queen of nuance. like, some metaphors here are just too advanced for my silly brain - for example, they're called the blue sisters because they're... sad. insane twist. and then there's of course the dead sister, whose smile lit up a room and all children loved her. her condition - endometriosis - is a very worthwhile topic, but i found her surface-level characterization made it all fall flat. i have no sense of her as a person whatsoever, and i think it wouldve been more interesting if literally any other sister died instead.
the cringe writing which already reared its head in c&f here takes full force. ah yes, the lament of the city being the police sirens. "drugs, terrible things" is a direct quote. i mean, hard to disagree. "wolfish grin" was mentioned to often i was half-heartedly expecting green orbs and harry styles to make an appearance too. it just all smells of fanfiction too strong, and not in a good way.
the characterization of all the sisters falls incredibly flat, and their mother is even more cartoonish. weirdly enough, they all don't feel like a family - coco mellors is hitting me over the head with the sentences about how much they love each other, but she never shows it. i also don't see any similarities or influence over each other between them. like, me and my siblings are very different people, but i've been told it's very obvious we're related - we have the same sense of humour, similar interests, we talk the same way. nothing of the sort happens in blue sisters. they feel more like grief acquitances than sisters.
moreover, mellors doesnt say anything interesting about sisterhood. she actually just lures you in with this premise and then gives a book ostensibly about addicition, but even there, she doesn't have anything fresh or interesting to say - like, addiction bad. AA good. we get it. she also doesn't show any other coping mechanisms beside AA, which is... curious. to say the least.
the only good part for me was the ending, which gave at least a bit of katharsis, but an probably undeserved one. i mightve been just projecting my own feelings there.
thats more or less my main takes, HOWEVER, this would not be a helena review if i didn't mention the plotline that bothered me the most - and it truly read like a plotline genetically bred to infuriate me, as it combined a problematic depicition of slavic people (much like myself) and a romanticization of a teacher-student relationship. light spoilers ahead.
so, one of the sisters, bonnie, is a boxer, and her trainer is russian. and listen - i am as anti-russian as any other polish bitch around here. HOWEVER it is fucking insane that miss coco mellors wrote this characters that cannot speak basic english despite living what, 25+ years in the us. "you want fight?" "is difficult this life"??? hello?? does she think primitive little eastern europeans are unable to learn a language in this time, while of course one of her perfect little blond americqn protagonists picks up japanese in three years like it's nothing? what infuriated me even more was this weird-ass moment when pavel (the russian trainer) says they dont have cheesecake in russia? aha??? cheesecake is literally one of the most popular, if not the most popular, dessert in eastern europe, and some even claim it was invented in poland??? coco. google is free. please use it sometimes. i know from your depiction of poland in c&f that you're allergic to it and you use your woman intuition only to guide your portrayal of eastern europe, but im begging you. just one time, google if the primitive slavs you like fetishizing so much have cheesecake. or, should i say it like pavel? me stupid slavic woman have cheesecake?
and then when pavel, who was 30 upon meeting bonnie, and bonnie, who was 15 upon meeting pavel, get together, it's seen as a great romantic moment. girls, i thought we moved past that in the discourse. like, what the actual fuck. as a slavic victim of grooming, i felt double hate-crimed by the entire pavel storyline.
on the topic of weird cultural fixations, which sadly continue from c&f, there's of course a phonetic depiction of jamaican accent in peachy's scenes, but that i leave to discuss to someone more qualified.
all in all, coco mellors once again proves - sometimes the most oppressed person of earth can be a beautiful rich (oh, im sorry, they're allegedly poor. they OWN only two properties in new york.....) able-bodied woman in the us......
October 6, 2025
4.25*
there's something so fascinating about family dynamics in books (especially sibling dynamics), and I will devour it every time. This book showcases messy, raw characters who are walking through grief. It showed how identity can be so tightly wound up in family dynamics and what can happen when that dynamic changes. It explored the complexities of addiction in many forms and how that addiction not only affects the individual, but also those around them. I also loved being able to see the sisters' intentions and how they understood their own behaviour, verses how the other characters understood that same behaviour. Because as is true in real life, our intentions are often misinterpreted.
there's something so fascinating about family dynamics in books (especially sibling dynamics), and I will devour it every time. This book showcases messy, raw characters who are walking through grief. It showed how identity can be so tightly wound up in family dynamics and what can happen when that dynamic changes. It explored the complexities of addiction in many forms and how that addiction not only affects the individual, but also those around them. I also loved being able to see the sisters' intentions and how they understood their own behaviour, verses how the other characters understood that same behaviour. Because as is true in real life, our intentions are often misinterpreted.
July 26, 2025
“As long as you are alive, it’s never too late to be found.”
I wish I could say I loved this book — at times it bordered on the edge of good and great, however, it ultimately fell short for me. The concept of this story held so much potential, it followed sisters Avery, Lucky and Bonnie as they navigate life and their grief over losing their beloved sister, Nicky.
This story is heavily focused on the everyday struggles of women, addiction, grief, self sabotaging behaviours and generational trauma. There was not a significant plot to this story, other than following the lives of the sisters so I wouldn't recommend reading this if you're not in the mood for something slow paced. The chapters are very long and alternate between each sister's pov, with flashbacks. The author was quite transparent with the premise of the story throughout, so there wasn't a large reveal.
I loved the authentic way the author portrayed sisterhood and the impact family trauma can have when it's not addressed. The three sisters all take different journey's have very different personalities, but they find a way to come together. I liked that the addiction aspect, at least for one sister, was very realistic and not romanticised. I didn't particularly find any of the sisters relatable, but I appreciated that they were complex and loved each other in spite of their flaws and differences. Avery's role as the caretaker was probably the most I could sympathise with and I loved the realisation she had with her own mother towards the end of the story. Mellors captured how different people can experience the same situation but interpret and respond to it differently.
The writing style was probably my favourite aspect of this and why I gave it 3 stars. The prologue captured me from the start, she gave a clear insight into exactly who each character was so I felt like I knew them from the beginning. However, the first third of the book was very slow. It picked up for me towards the end, but it was pretty tedious to push through due to the long chapters and slow pace. This story would have been better off starting two thirds of the way in and exploring the ending in more detail — the 10 year flash forward in the epilogue didn't do it for me. It felt rushed and like it was missing something. That said, the pacing was slow due to the plot itself and did not take away from Mellors' beautiful writing throughout.
I think the intention of this book is to deliver something profound and poignant about the modern woman but the execution left me slightly disappointed. While I don't think this will have any sort of lasting impression on me, I did enjoy aspects of the story and it is filled with beautiful and relatable quotes.
⊹₊⟡⋆ Quotes: ⊹₊⟡⋆
“He was the only man in the house, but he also was the house. They lived inside his moods.”
“Their family had always been good at hellos and goodbyes, moments ending even as they began. It was easy to love someone in the beginnings and endings; it was all the time in between that was so hard.”
“A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend?”
“They say you don’t know your principles until they become inconvenient to you.”
I wish I could say I loved this book — at times it bordered on the edge of good and great, however, it ultimately fell short for me. The concept of this story held so much potential, it followed sisters Avery, Lucky and Bonnie as they navigate life and their grief over losing their beloved sister, Nicky.
This story is heavily focused on the everyday struggles of women, addiction, grief, self sabotaging behaviours and generational trauma. There was not a significant plot to this story, other than following the lives of the sisters so I wouldn't recommend reading this if you're not in the mood for something slow paced. The chapters are very long and alternate between each sister's pov, with flashbacks. The author was quite transparent with the premise of the story throughout, so there wasn't a large reveal.
I loved the authentic way the author portrayed sisterhood and the impact family trauma can have when it's not addressed. The three sisters all take different journey's have very different personalities, but they find a way to come together. I liked that the addiction aspect, at least for one sister, was very realistic and not romanticised. I didn't particularly find any of the sisters relatable, but I appreciated that they were complex and loved each other in spite of their flaws and differences. Avery's role as the caretaker was probably the most I could sympathise with and I loved the realisation she had with her own mother towards the end of the story. Mellors captured how different people can experience the same situation but interpret and respond to it differently.
The writing style was probably my favourite aspect of this and why I gave it 3 stars. The prologue captured me from the start, she gave a clear insight into exactly who each character was so I felt like I knew them from the beginning. However, the first third of the book was very slow. It picked up for me towards the end, but it was pretty tedious to push through due to the long chapters and slow pace. This story would have been better off starting two thirds of the way in and exploring the ending in more detail — the 10 year flash forward in the epilogue didn't do it for me. It felt rushed and like it was missing something. That said, the pacing was slow due to the plot itself and did not take away from Mellors' beautiful writing throughout.
I think the intention of this book is to deliver something profound and poignant about the modern woman but the execution left me slightly disappointed. While I don't think this will have any sort of lasting impression on me, I did enjoy aspects of the story and it is filled with beautiful and relatable quotes.
⊹₊⟡⋆ Quotes: ⊹₊⟡⋆
“He was the only man in the house, but he also was the house. They lived inside his moods.”
“Their family had always been good at hellos and goodbyes, moments ending even as they began. It was easy to love someone in the beginnings and endings; it was all the time in between that was so hard.”
“A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend?”
“They say you don’t know your principles until they become inconvenient to you.”
May 2, 2024
dialogue/prose/characterisation so cringe it made me want to claw my eyes out
November 15, 2025
Welcome to the heartfelt, cry-your-eyes-out, teary, angsty story of the Blue Sisters, which reminded me of a modern tale of the March sisters with horrible, self-absorbed parents!
This is a captivating sisterhood saga and tale of a dysfunctional family where three sisters, living in different cities and leading their own paths, deal with the grief of Nicky’s first death anniversary.
Each sister has a different approach to the hand the world dealt them. The eldest sister, Avery, graduated from Columbia, experienced a breakdown with drug addiction, joined a cult, slept on the streets, and had a quick awakening to rewrite her life story. She became a successful lawyer, found her beautiful wife, and now lives in domestic bliss at the age of 33. Avery is the analytical, reasonable one and often the real mother to the girls due to their own mother’s lack of maternal instincts.
Bonnie, the second daughter, 31, had a brief connection with their alcoholic father, who tried to raise her as the son he never had. He paid for her boxing classes, which led to her rising and falling career as a boxer. After a devastating defeat, she changed careers to become a bouncer in LA, channeling her resentments and missed opportunities into physical pain. She is the stoic one of the family.
Nicky, the sister they are grieving, was the most joyful one. She found happiness in little things, was more sentimental and caring, and was a good teacher. She suffered from endometriosis and bore her pain alone until the day she died.
The youngest sister, Lucky, 24, never considered herself lucky despite her early success as a model at the age of 14. She earned big money, traveled around the world, and filled her emptiness with alcohol and drugs until her body gave out.
The common thread among them is their reliance on addictive behaviors to cope with their grief, unhappiness, and hatred for their dysfunctional family. Avery is a kleptomaniac, Bonnie is addicted to pain, and Lucky is an alcoholic and drug addict, though they have not confessed this to anyone, not even themselves.
When their parents decide to sell the two-bedroom family house they grew up in and tell them to share their late sister’s belongings, the sisters unite against their parents to stop the sale. Their meeting in New York brings out long-simmering emotions, including anger, sadness, and unsaid secrets that threaten to become an avalanche, potentially tearing apart what they have preserved for years. Can they learn to let go of the past and rebuild by healing their own brokenness?
Each sister is broken inside, and to heal, they must learn to trust and support each other. But can they achieve this crucial task?
Overall: Bring out your napkins! This book will bring out your ugly tears and is guaranteed to tear your heart open. Each connection with the characters may resonate with your own life story, vices, resentments, family problems, and redemptions. The powerful, genuine, and profound story of the Blue Sisters Saga is a must-read!
Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group/Ballantine Books for sharing this heartfelt fiction’s digital reviewer copy with me in exchange for my honest thoughts.
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This is a captivating sisterhood saga and tale of a dysfunctional family where three sisters, living in different cities and leading their own paths, deal with the grief of Nicky’s first death anniversary.
Each sister has a different approach to the hand the world dealt them. The eldest sister, Avery, graduated from Columbia, experienced a breakdown with drug addiction, joined a cult, slept on the streets, and had a quick awakening to rewrite her life story. She became a successful lawyer, found her beautiful wife, and now lives in domestic bliss at the age of 33. Avery is the analytical, reasonable one and often the real mother to the girls due to their own mother’s lack of maternal instincts.
Bonnie, the second daughter, 31, had a brief connection with their alcoholic father, who tried to raise her as the son he never had. He paid for her boxing classes, which led to her rising and falling career as a boxer. After a devastating defeat, she changed careers to become a bouncer in LA, channeling her resentments and missed opportunities into physical pain. She is the stoic one of the family.
Nicky, the sister they are grieving, was the most joyful one. She found happiness in little things, was more sentimental and caring, and was a good teacher. She suffered from endometriosis and bore her pain alone until the day she died.
The youngest sister, Lucky, 24, never considered herself lucky despite her early success as a model at the age of 14. She earned big money, traveled around the world, and filled her emptiness with alcohol and drugs until her body gave out.
The common thread among them is their reliance on addictive behaviors to cope with their grief, unhappiness, and hatred for their dysfunctional family. Avery is a kleptomaniac, Bonnie is addicted to pain, and Lucky is an alcoholic and drug addict, though they have not confessed this to anyone, not even themselves.
When their parents decide to sell the two-bedroom family house they grew up in and tell them to share their late sister’s belongings, the sisters unite against their parents to stop the sale. Their meeting in New York brings out long-simmering emotions, including anger, sadness, and unsaid secrets that threaten to become an avalanche, potentially tearing apart what they have preserved for years. Can they learn to let go of the past and rebuild by healing their own brokenness?
Each sister is broken inside, and to heal, they must learn to trust and support each other. But can they achieve this crucial task?
Overall: Bring out your napkins! This book will bring out your ugly tears and is guaranteed to tear your heart open. Each connection with the characters may resonate with your own life story, vices, resentments, family problems, and redemptions. The powerful, genuine, and profound story of the Blue Sisters Saga is a must-read!
Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group/Ballantine Books for sharing this heartfelt fiction’s digital reviewer copy with me in exchange for my honest thoughts.
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August 6, 2024
This book is not only painfully boring but just said a hysterectomy is a cure for endometriosis. Please stop writing about chronic pain conditions that you know NOTHING about. I am tired of having to go on a soap box advocating for myself because authors love to write about things they don’t have the facts for.
Endometriosis is a condition where tissue SIMILAR to the lining of the uterus grows outside of the uterus. This tissue is not the same. Endometriosis can occur in women who don’t have a uterus. A hysterectomy is not a cure. Please let’s do better and stop spreading false information therefore making it more difficult for myself and others to find appropriate care and research.
Endometriosis is a condition where tissue SIMILAR to the lining of the uterus grows outside of the uterus. This tissue is not the same. Endometriosis can occur in women who don’t have a uterus. A hysterectomy is not a cure. Please let’s do better and stop spreading false information therefore making it more difficult for myself and others to find appropriate care and research.
July 8, 2024
reading this as an eldest sister (of 3)... this ripped my heart out
July 9, 2024
i love coco mellors. she has saved my ass from a somewhat embarassing, definitely a sign of me being utterly jobless at the end of this semester, sticker burning session. yes. i wanted to burn stickers. nay, i needed to. after a month of reading nothing except a few travel logs from 1987 telling me to “explore the soviet union”, i was stuck in a rut and had a longing to burn little stickers with my least favorite book characters on them. i even have one on my nightstand with xaden something-or-other’s face on it.
but with a hallelujah (say it. say the hallelujah.), mellors so wonderfully gifted me with an arc of blue sisters! and i really cannot recommend it more. if you love sisterhood, if you love lgbtqia+ representation (who doesn’t), and if you love bonnie blue– you don’t yet but you will! read blue sisters when it releases in september.
avery - the oldest, most tragically perfect sister. avery of course is the poster girl for older sibling trauma, essentially having to parent her younger sisters. now, all grown up, avery is a mask with tears streaming down her face that only she must wipe herself. her environment is mature, but is she? the answer lies in what avery chooses to do with her life. she grapples with readiness for children with her wife, who so desperately is trying to convince her that she does want this, and loyalty to what matters most. that, she does not know yet. i could delve into the psychology of this particular relationship, but i won’t because i’d go on for hours! her path is a path of self-discovery in her 30s, and we soon find out whether avery needs to hurt people in order to find her way.
bonnie - bonnie is tough. she is brave. she is strong, inside and out. i found bonnie to truly have a heart of gold. her other sisters rely on her so very much and i think that we really do have to commend her for taking on the burden of so many other people while still trying to stay afloat. that’s why she’s my favorite character <3
she must deal with her feelings for her coach of 15 years in the boxing ring as well, so…read it to find out? i can’t say more but if you’re still not convinced. read blue sisters for bonnie.
lucky - lucky is dying inside. and her part of this book makes you feel like you are too. she struggles with overdosing and sharpening the hazy boundaries of her relationships, whether that’s with her sisters or with her flings. she stumbles through life without bothering to look for the light, and because of this, has a jumbled up mess in her heart from so much abuse during her time on earth.
nicky - all of the blue sisters handle nicky’s death and try to come to terms with it in coco mellors’ second novel. nicky may not have been the so-called best in anything, or really had stood out against her sisters before her untimely demise, but she was theirs. and she isn’t anymore.
there is SO much going on in blue sisters, which meant that i had to often take a breather or like stare at a blank wall to understand what i just read. that might be a problem for other people, but i love books that are overwhelming in the best way! similar to a cup of coffee that overflows but it’s so good that you might want to drink the rest that’s on the table. DON’T MAKE ME FEEL EMBARASSED, okay? just imagine that it's super clean and very hygienic and i swear to fucking god if you make me feel bad about that terrible analogy i will find you. but, moving on, my point is that all the flaws in blue sisters are really just dressed up positive traits. at least for me.
to finish off this absurdly long review, dear reader, dear lovebug, do pick up this book when you see it in a bookstore or library this fall. you won’t regret it. but if you do, like please just don’t tell me because coco mellors does have my entire heart and we are getting engaged tomorrow. she just doesn’t know it. so.
but with a hallelujah (say it. say the hallelujah.), mellors so wonderfully gifted me with an arc of blue sisters! and i really cannot recommend it more. if you love sisterhood, if you love lgbtqia+ representation (who doesn’t), and if you love bonnie blue– you don’t yet but you will! read blue sisters when it releases in september.
avery - the oldest, most tragically perfect sister. avery of course is the poster girl for older sibling trauma, essentially having to parent her younger sisters. now, all grown up, avery is a mask with tears streaming down her face that only she must wipe herself. her environment is mature, but is she? the answer lies in what avery chooses to do with her life. she grapples with readiness for children with her wife, who so desperately is trying to convince her that she does want this, and loyalty to what matters most. that, she does not know yet. i could delve into the psychology of this particular relationship, but i won’t because i’d go on for hours! her path is a path of self-discovery in her 30s, and we soon find out whether avery needs to hurt people in order to find her way.
bonnie - bonnie is tough. she is brave. she is strong, inside and out. i found bonnie to truly have a heart of gold. her other sisters rely on her so very much and i think that we really do have to commend her for taking on the burden of so many other people while still trying to stay afloat. that’s why she’s my favorite character <3
she must deal with her feelings for her coach of 15 years in the boxing ring as well, so…read it to find out? i can’t say more but if you’re still not convinced. read blue sisters for bonnie.
lucky - lucky is dying inside. and her part of this book makes you feel like you are too. she struggles with overdosing and sharpening the hazy boundaries of her relationships, whether that’s with her sisters or with her flings. she stumbles through life without bothering to look for the light, and because of this, has a jumbled up mess in her heart from so much abuse during her time on earth.
nicky - all of the blue sisters handle nicky’s death and try to come to terms with it in coco mellors’ second novel. nicky may not have been the so-called best in anything, or really had stood out against her sisters before her untimely demise, but she was theirs. and she isn’t anymore.
there is SO much going on in blue sisters, which meant that i had to often take a breather or like stare at a blank wall to understand what i just read. that might be a problem for other people, but i love books that are overwhelming in the best way! similar to a cup of coffee that overflows but it’s so good that you might want to drink the rest that’s on the table. DON’T MAKE ME FEEL EMBARASSED, okay? just imagine that it's super clean and very hygienic and i swear to fucking god if you make me feel bad about that terrible analogy i will find you. but, moving on, my point is that all the flaws in blue sisters are really just dressed up positive traits. at least for me.
to finish off this absurdly long review, dear reader, dear lovebug, do pick up this book when you see it in a bookstore or library this fall. you won’t regret it. but if you do, like please just don’t tell me because coco mellors does have my entire heart and we are getting engaged tomorrow. she just doesn’t know it. so.
November 14, 2025
Aggressive in how it blew me away. A perfectly heartbreaking view of generational trauma, grief, and the act of loving and being loved.
January 5, 2024
this made me think of the tiktok post about siblings saying "my sister passed recently. i hope she haunts me" ❤️💔
i love you coco mellors i will read anything you write
i love you coco mellors i will read anything you write
Read
October 24, 2025Clean up on aisle cornyyyyyyyy
September 3, 2024
I love stories about sisterhood. I was excited for a novel about sisterhood and grief, particularly as Coco Mellors has quite the hype around her (though Cleopatra and Frankenstein never actually made it off my TBR). But this was kind of awful.
It's been a long time since I've read a well-reviewed novel that had so much useless dialogue. It simply serves no function to the story. What's even more wild is in the acknowledgements, the authors points to people teaching her to engage in "less talk, more action" but she obviously did not heed their warning. There is so much dialogue and only about 10% of it develops the characters or the plot.
The characters feel flat and unrealistic. They're all horribly unlikeable, but that can be forgiven if the character is fun to read. I initially identified with Avery, but then we get 300 pages of her being whiny and entitled that I just can't get over. Despite being adults, they all come off like petulant children. I understand we regress when with our family, but they were tough to root for as main characters. It's also as though the characters had no development for 20 years of their life, then suddenly in the course of one week they become entirely new people (same goes for the mother).
The author also should have done more research. The story involves boxing, modeling, AA/recovery, addiction, lesbianism, and it seems like only the addiction stuff she got right and even then it's incredibly oversimplified/fantastical. There's a hilariously homophobic scene where The anal retentive nature of this character just didn't line up with her behavior at all, as her emotional response wasn't one of panic even though it is in every other situation.
There's also weird race stuff. I know books are criticized if they don't offer diversity, but even worse is when an author makes a character a person of color just to prove they're being diverse. Avery's wife is just the Asian sidekick/magical person of color who is a wet blanket full of wisdom, without any personality traits aside from "therapist." Bonnie's trainer Pavel has been in the country for decades but still speaks with an inconsistent accent reminiscent of cold war era cartoon impressions of Russians. If all you know are white Westerners, just write white characters, it's fine Coco.
The dialogue was excessive, the characters were bad, and the author's ignorance showed throughout. The only kind words I have are that the plot is well-suited for a limited series television show.
If you want a story about sisterhood and grief, shoot for Private Rites instead.
It's been a long time since I've read a well-reviewed novel that had so much useless dialogue. It simply serves no function to the story. What's even more wild is in the acknowledgements, the authors points to people teaching her to engage in "less talk, more action" but she obviously did not heed their warning. There is so much dialogue and only about 10% of it develops the characters or the plot.
The characters feel flat and unrealistic. They're all horribly unlikeable, but that can be forgiven if the character is fun to read. I initially identified with Avery, but then we get 300 pages of her being whiny and entitled that I just can't get over. Despite being adults, they all come off like petulant children. I understand we regress when with our family, but they were tough to root for as main characters. It's also as though the characters had no development for 20 years of their life, then suddenly in the course of one week they become entirely new people (same goes for the mother).
The author also should have done more research. The story involves boxing, modeling, AA/recovery, addiction, lesbianism, and it seems like only the addiction stuff she got right and even then it's incredibly oversimplified/fantastical. There's a hilariously homophobic scene where The anal retentive nature of this character just didn't line up with her behavior at all, as her emotional response wasn't one of panic even though it is in every other situation.
There's also weird race stuff. I know books are criticized if they don't offer diversity, but even worse is when an author makes a character a person of color just to prove they're being diverse. Avery's wife is just the Asian sidekick/magical person of color who is a wet blanket full of wisdom, without any personality traits aside from "therapist." Bonnie's trainer Pavel has been in the country for decades but still speaks with an inconsistent accent reminiscent of cold war era cartoon impressions of Russians. If all you know are white Westerners, just write white characters, it's fine Coco.
The dialogue was excessive, the characters were bad, and the author's ignorance showed throughout. The only kind words I have are that the plot is well-suited for a limited series television show.
If you want a story about sisterhood and grief, shoot for Private Rites instead.
May 26, 2024
I am surprised I managed to finish this one because nearly every aspect annoyed me. It was very heavy-handed and even though I liked having the POV of each sister as the story progressed, it made it feel obvious in a way that ended up being boring. The writing style overall didn't work for me and there was one metaphor about orcas that genuinely made me laugh. Even though the book deals with pretty heavy topics, a lot of it felt superficial. The sense of connection or understanding was assumed, but it never really felt like anything developed throughout the novel or really mattered. It was quick bursts of activity, characters changed, and then everything was wrapped up neatly with an epilogue.
September 19, 2024
THIS IS THE HOTTEST NEW BOOK OF THE FALL… and for good reason!!! i ✨loved✨ it and haven’t wanted to pick up a book since. my heart is with the blue sisters 🤍
read if you like: HELLO BEAUTIFUL, family + sibling drama, character driven novels
Read with Jenna nailed another book club pick!!! they’re on fire this year. consider this for your fall book club choice 📖
if you have a sister—you NEED to read this book! as a middle child with two sisters, the author put so many of my feelings and subconscious family dynamics into words. i was truly in awe and saying “YUP!” “YUP!” “YUP!” (cue the Wendy Williams meme iykyk) and it was so damn relatable. i was absolutely obsessed with each sister and their personal story arc.
if you’re looking for a plot driven book, this isn’t it—it’s super character driven and you travel through the POVs of each sister who is dealing with the loss of their sister so differently. my friend said the author used grief as a plot line and boy is it ever—she handled such complex and heavy topics with grace (grief, addiction, overdosing). i felt every single thing the characters were feeling and going through. and the ending??? GTFO!!! UGH i miss Lucky, Avery and Bonnie already 🥹
BLUE SISTERS follows three sisters that return back to their childhood house for sale in NYC. they’re all dealing with the unexpected loss of their sister very differently. alongside their grief and the move, they start to uncover the truth about themselves and the secrets they’re all keeping from each other—and themselves 💙
i saw someone say the characters walk right off the page and it is perfectly put. this book is emo and heavy but so moving. not to mention it had me SOBBING at the end 😩 idk what else to say besides the writing was beautiful, the story was powerful, the author put so many of my feelings and thoughts down on paper and i just loved this so much 🫶🏼
this is a new-to-me author but now i’m so excited to go checkout her backlist book! add this to your fall TBR and thank me later 🍂
fave quotes (could have tabbed them ALL):
"Her life had been reduced to two days, the day Nicky was still alive and the day she died. The rich and subtle patchwork of years and seasons tha made up her life before she was gone."
"It is good you have each other, the artist had said, regarding them seriously as she worked. You never have to explain yourself to sisters. It was true. Being one of four sisters always felt like being part of something magic. Once Bonnie noticed it, she saw the world was made up of fours. The seasons. The elements. The points on a com-pass.
Four suits in a pack of cards. Four chambers of a human heart. Bonnie loved being a part of this mystical number, this perfect symmetry of two sets of two."
“Lucky is twenty-six years old, and she is lost. In fact, all the remaining sisters are. But what they don't know is this: As long as you are alive, it is never too late to be found."
"How could she not have known how deeply her sister was struggling? How could she have missed the signs? She was the big sister; it was her job not to miss things."
"There's just no end to the missing. There was life before and there's life now. And I can't seem to accept it. I can't accept that I'll have to miss her forever. There will never be relief.”
"A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend? Look at an umbilical cord-tough, sinuous, unlovely, yet essential-and compare it to a friendship bracelet of brightly woven thread. That is the difference between a sister and a friend."
read if you like: HELLO BEAUTIFUL, family + sibling drama, character driven novels
Read with Jenna nailed another book club pick!!! they’re on fire this year. consider this for your fall book club choice 📖
if you have a sister—you NEED to read this book! as a middle child with two sisters, the author put so many of my feelings and subconscious family dynamics into words. i was truly in awe and saying “YUP!” “YUP!” “YUP!” (cue the Wendy Williams meme iykyk) and it was so damn relatable. i was absolutely obsessed with each sister and their personal story arc.
if you’re looking for a plot driven book, this isn’t it—it’s super character driven and you travel through the POVs of each sister who is dealing with the loss of their sister so differently. my friend said the author used grief as a plot line and boy is it ever—she handled such complex and heavy topics with grace (grief, addiction, overdosing). i felt every single thing the characters were feeling and going through. and the ending??? GTFO!!! UGH i miss Lucky, Avery and Bonnie already 🥹
BLUE SISTERS follows three sisters that return back to their childhood house for sale in NYC. they’re all dealing with the unexpected loss of their sister very differently. alongside their grief and the move, they start to uncover the truth about themselves and the secrets they’re all keeping from each other—and themselves 💙
i saw someone say the characters walk right off the page and it is perfectly put. this book is emo and heavy but so moving. not to mention it had me SOBBING at the end 😩 idk what else to say besides the writing was beautiful, the story was powerful, the author put so many of my feelings and thoughts down on paper and i just loved this so much 🫶🏼
this is a new-to-me author but now i’m so excited to go checkout her backlist book! add this to your fall TBR and thank me later 🍂
fave quotes (could have tabbed them ALL):
"Her life had been reduced to two days, the day Nicky was still alive and the day she died. The rich and subtle patchwork of years and seasons tha made up her life before she was gone."
"It is good you have each other, the artist had said, regarding them seriously as she worked. You never have to explain yourself to sisters. It was true. Being one of four sisters always felt like being part of something magic. Once Bonnie noticed it, she saw the world was made up of fours. The seasons. The elements. The points on a com-pass.
Four suits in a pack of cards. Four chambers of a human heart. Bonnie loved being a part of this mystical number, this perfect symmetry of two sets of two."
“Lucky is twenty-six years old, and she is lost. In fact, all the remaining sisters are. But what they don't know is this: As long as you are alive, it is never too late to be found."
"How could she not have known how deeply her sister was struggling? How could she have missed the signs? She was the big sister; it was her job not to miss things."
"There's just no end to the missing. There was life before and there's life now. And I can't seem to accept it. I can't accept that I'll have to miss her forever. There will never be relief.”
"A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend? Look at an umbilical cord-tough, sinuous, unlovely, yet essential-and compare it to a friendship bracelet of brightly woven thread. That is the difference between a sister and a friend."
December 12, 2024
4.5/5 ⭐️
- Wow wow wow!! What a powerful read!! Loved how this story had so much depth. I truly don’t know if I’ve ever read a book that more accurately depicts what it’s like to have sisters.
- If you’re grieving or have siblings, this book will resonate with you on so many deeper levels. The writing is beautiful without being super flowery. The way the author describes emotions is incredible. I really felt like I was in each sisters head.
- I really thought I would have a favorite sister or a pov that I would want to gravitate towards most, but I found myself wanting each pov to keep going at the end of every chapter. The characters are unlikable at times, but they’re also so so human. LOVED THIS!!
- Wow wow wow!! What a powerful read!! Loved how this story had so much depth. I truly don’t know if I’ve ever read a book that more accurately depicts what it’s like to have sisters.
- If you’re grieving or have siblings, this book will resonate with you on so many deeper levels. The writing is beautiful without being super flowery. The way the author describes emotions is incredible. I really felt like I was in each sisters head.
- I really thought I would have a favorite sister or a pov that I would want to gravitate towards most, but I found myself wanting each pov to keep going at the end of every chapter. The characters are unlikable at times, but they’re also so so human. LOVED THIS!!
January 17, 2025
"A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend?"
Blue Sisters has an eerily similar set-up to another recently released novel I read, and gave a similar rating. That being The Alternatives. Both follow the lives of 4 sisters, each highly accomplished and successful when judged by our “typical societal standards” (attractive, wealthy, with exceptional careers), yet each struggling with complex emotional troubles. In each story, these siblings reconnect after one of them has vanished from their lives, and old dynamics resurface. Whilst I love the family-dynamic aspect of both these novels, reading them made me realize something vital: I’m so tired of this subgenre of “the woes of the wealthy women’s fiction”. Sally Rooney, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and yes, the authors previous work Cleopatra and Frankenstein: to me, they all started to feel like a dime a dozen.
The story:
The Blue sisters, despite growing up closely together, couldn’t have been more different. There’s Avery; a successful lawyer who’s built a seemingly perfect life with her wife in upstate London after recovering from a past of substance abuse. Bonnie: a professional boxer of top class touring the world with her trainer. Nicky, the middle child and connecting factor of the family, working as a teacher, but struggling with chronic pain from endometriosis. And finally Lucky, an international model who has graced billboards around the world.
When Nicky unexpectedly passes away, it sends the 3 remaining sisters spiraling out of control and away from each other. A year later, when their mother announces it’s time to sell Nicky’s apartment which has been kept in a state of suspension ever since her death, the three finally reconnect and confront their individual and shared grief.
What I loved:
The novel wears its themes up its sleeve; grief and addiction in many forms, and the special bond between siblings that allows (and sometimes forces) the characters to stick together through it all. The Blue sisters carry this story, and their character development is solid enough to support that. It feels like the author knows them through and through individually ánd as a family unit. This allows her to infuse each of their sections with a lot of personality. Even without reading the name above each chapter, there would have been no confusion as to which perspective we are reading from (something that was a problem for me in The Alternatives at times.
When it comes to the writing, Mellors has some greatly quotable lines and a few profound scenes. That being said, often it feels like well-trodden ground. Lines and insights are quite formulaic and even cliché and lack the depth to support their quasi-profound delivery. More on this in the next section.
What I didn’t love:
Apart from the genre just not being my jam in particular, I had 2 major issues with Mellors writing style. Retrospectively, I recognized these from my attempt at reading Cleopatra and Frankenstein. There’s the general adagio of “show, don’t tell” in writing, and Mellors chooses to do the exact opposite. She describes and tells us everything about these characters, their feelings towards each other and even the deeper traumas that are at the root of those interactions, without ever showing them through their actions on page. We are told “Avery and her mother have always had a strained relationship. It’s because Avery never felt like her mother wanted her in the first place”, rather than being shown their uneasy interaction. It’s almost like you’re reading the authors character-profile-notes, rather than the fully fledged novel that was supposed to spawn from it.
Secondly, the pacing is way off. The first 70% of the page count is taken up by individual selfdestruction-city. It’s repetitive and almost made me way to DNF the story multiple times. Only after that, when we get to see the true interpersonal conflict and resolution play out between the sisters that the story becomes good.
Overall, I’m sad to say that this was about as middle-of-the-road as it gets for me. I feel like fans of the works I mentioned earlier might still love Mellors sophomore novel. To me, it made it clear that this is a genre that I’m burned out on.
Blue Sisters has an eerily similar set-up to another recently released novel I read, and gave a similar rating. That being The Alternatives. Both follow the lives of 4 sisters, each highly accomplished and successful when judged by our “typical societal standards” (attractive, wealthy, with exceptional careers), yet each struggling with complex emotional troubles. In each story, these siblings reconnect after one of them has vanished from their lives, and old dynamics resurface. Whilst I love the family-dynamic aspect of both these novels, reading them made me realize something vital: I’m so tired of this subgenre of “the woes of the wealthy women’s fiction”. Sally Rooney, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and yes, the authors previous work Cleopatra and Frankenstein: to me, they all started to feel like a dime a dozen.
The story:
The Blue sisters, despite growing up closely together, couldn’t have been more different. There’s Avery; a successful lawyer who’s built a seemingly perfect life with her wife in upstate London after recovering from a past of substance abuse. Bonnie: a professional boxer of top class touring the world with her trainer. Nicky, the middle child and connecting factor of the family, working as a teacher, but struggling with chronic pain from endometriosis. And finally Lucky, an international model who has graced billboards around the world.
When Nicky unexpectedly passes away, it sends the 3 remaining sisters spiraling out of control and away from each other. A year later, when their mother announces it’s time to sell Nicky’s apartment which has been kept in a state of suspension ever since her death, the three finally reconnect and confront their individual and shared grief.
What I loved:
The novel wears its themes up its sleeve; grief and addiction in many forms, and the special bond between siblings that allows (and sometimes forces) the characters to stick together through it all. The Blue sisters carry this story, and their character development is solid enough to support that. It feels like the author knows them through and through individually ánd as a family unit. This allows her to infuse each of their sections with a lot of personality. Even without reading the name above each chapter, there would have been no confusion as to which perspective we are reading from (something that was a problem for me in The Alternatives at times.
When it comes to the writing, Mellors has some greatly quotable lines and a few profound scenes. That being said, often it feels like well-trodden ground. Lines and insights are quite formulaic and even cliché and lack the depth to support their quasi-profound delivery. More on this in the next section.
What I didn’t love:
Apart from the genre just not being my jam in particular, I had 2 major issues with Mellors writing style. Retrospectively, I recognized these from my attempt at reading Cleopatra and Frankenstein. There’s the general adagio of “show, don’t tell” in writing, and Mellors chooses to do the exact opposite. She describes and tells us everything about these characters, their feelings towards each other and even the deeper traumas that are at the root of those interactions, without ever showing them through their actions on page. We are told “Avery and her mother have always had a strained relationship. It’s because Avery never felt like her mother wanted her in the first place”, rather than being shown their uneasy interaction. It’s almost like you’re reading the authors character-profile-notes, rather than the fully fledged novel that was supposed to spawn from it.
Secondly, the pacing is way off. The first 70% of the page count is taken up by individual selfdestruction-city. It’s repetitive and almost made me way to DNF the story multiple times. Only after that, when we get to see the true interpersonal conflict and resolution play out between the sisters that the story becomes good.
Overall, I’m sad to say that this was about as middle-of-the-road as it gets for me. I feel like fans of the works I mentioned earlier might still love Mellors sophomore novel. To me, it made it clear that this is a genre that I’m burned out on.
February 7, 2025
˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗ 3 𝕊𝕥𝕒𝕣𝕤 ˗ˏˋ★‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹
This story revolves around four sisters—Avery, Bonnie, Nicky, and Lucky—each seemingly successful, yet all quietly carrying the weight of grief and personal struggles. When Nicky unexpectedly dies, the remaining sisters are drawn back together a year later, forced to confront their shared past and fractured bond.
There’s a deep, almost haunting sadness in every chapter—grief, longing, and the messy, unresolved love between siblings unfolding in quiet, poignant moments. the pacing is slow at first, but it builds a tension that’s almost palpable, each sister’s journey toward reckoning with their own pain and the weight of losing Nicky pulling them toward a powerful, emotional climax.
I was very invested in the story, it's deep and it's mournful. The long and drawn-out chapters though, ugh they really had me struggling. Even with the audiobook, they were so painfully long. It screwed with the pacing for me and I would find myself not able to stay focused on the story and my mind wandering off a bit.
This happens to me when I'm not fully engaged with a story, or I feel like it drags on with too much focus on inconsequential things. This is just my own personal reading preference, I think that if you enjoy more character driven stories, that are detailed and don't mind longer chapters, you'll enjoy this one. I did, I just had a couple of issues.
💙 Complex Family Drama
💙 Grief After Loss
💙 LGBTQ Rep
💙 Sisterhood
💙 Multiple POV’s
💙 Addiction
💙 Character Driven
⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ Connect with me on Instagram ˗ˏˋ★‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹
This story revolves around four sisters—Avery, Bonnie, Nicky, and Lucky—each seemingly successful, yet all quietly carrying the weight of grief and personal struggles. When Nicky unexpectedly dies, the remaining sisters are drawn back together a year later, forced to confront their shared past and fractured bond.
There’s a deep, almost haunting sadness in every chapter—grief, longing, and the messy, unresolved love between siblings unfolding in quiet, poignant moments. the pacing is slow at first, but it builds a tension that’s almost palpable, each sister’s journey toward reckoning with their own pain and the weight of losing Nicky pulling them toward a powerful, emotional climax.
I was very invested in the story, it's deep and it's mournful. The long and drawn-out chapters though, ugh they really had me struggling. Even with the audiobook, they were so painfully long. It screwed with the pacing for me and I would find myself not able to stay focused on the story and my mind wandering off a bit.
This happens to me when I'm not fully engaged with a story, or I feel like it drags on with too much focus on inconsequential things. This is just my own personal reading preference, I think that if you enjoy more character driven stories, that are detailed and don't mind longer chapters, you'll enjoy this one. I did, I just had a couple of issues.
💙 Complex Family Drama
💙 Grief After Loss
💙 LGBTQ Rep
💙 Sisterhood
💙 Multiple POV’s
💙 Addiction
💙 Character Driven
⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ Connect with me on Instagram ˗ˏˋ★‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹
Read
January 20, 2025just couldn't do it. lit fic and me just don't get along.
June 17, 2024
So to start with - she’s neutral on the genocide being done to Palestine so put the book down if you have any human decency. I didn’t realise until after and wish I had never purchased this book.
On the book: TROPEY AF: it’s as if she followed TikTok trends of middle class white women and wrote a book about what they wanted to hear. She shouldn’t have ventured into the queer experience, working class or drug addiction. So she’s smart as far as following an algorithm of what people want to hear is concerned and I’m guessing that’s why people love it but it lacks depth and reality.
On the book: TROPEY AF: it’s as if she followed TikTok trends of middle class white women and wrote a book about what they wanted to hear. She shouldn’t have ventured into the queer experience, working class or drug addiction. So she’s smart as far as following an algorithm of what people want to hear is concerned and I’m guessing that’s why people love it but it lacks depth and reality.
June 25, 2024
Baffled by all the praise for this. Bland and contrived story, severely underdeveloped characters and a sisterhood bond I neither believed nor cared about. So much telling rather than showing.
June 6, 2024
“Being one of four sisters always felt like being part of something magic.”
Blue Sisters is the kind of book that, depending on my mood, I will either detest or adore. Fortunately, this time around, it was the latter. Having given Coco Mellors’ debut a hard pass, I was weary of reading more by her, yet, the premise for Blue Sisters sounded a lot less insipid than the one for C&F. While certainly not flawless, Blue Sisters makes for a tender, if occasionally too sentimental, exploration of sisterhood, grief, and self-sabotage. It should definitely appeal to fans of the people-fucking-up genre (examples being films like: The Worst Person in the World, Passages, Return to Seoul, Frances Ha and series like The Bisexual) or readers who enjoy complex sibling dynamics (such as in Yolk, Sunset, Butter Honey Pig Bread, The Arsonists' City) or female-centered books like Writers & Lovers, We Play Ourselves, and Self-Portrait with Boy.
“Their family had always been good at hellos and goodbyes, moments ending even as they began. It was easy to love someone in the beginnings and endings; it was all the time in between that was so hard.”
The characters are messy and there is a lot of friction among the sisters, so yes, we get a lot of arguments. With the exception of perhaps one or two cases, these come across as very authentic, sometimes overwhelmingly so. Hurtful words are hurled, sometimes with the intention to hurt, sometimes not. Things escalate, but not always. Mellors’ approach to these scenes felt cinematic yet intimate, and I appreciated how she is able to convey the conflicting feelings of her characters. The sisters are often unable to escape the dynamics of their childhood, with Bonnie acting as a pacifier, Avery as the mother, and Lucky as the rebellious youngest one. Avery and Lucky are assholes a lot of the time, something the narrative knows and doesn’t shy away from. Yet that doesn’t make them any less rounded or sympathetic. While Mellors doesn’t use their loss or childhood to excuse their actions, she allows those things to inform our understanding of her characters. I found her very empathetic, and loved many of the reflections around love (be it sisterly or romantic), insecurity, loneliness, and grief.
“She was home, the only one she knew, not because she always lived in it, but because it always lived in her.”
Through alternating chapters, the novel follows three of the Blue sisters, Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky, a year after the death of the fourth sister, Nicky. At the beginning of the novel, the Blue sisters are in different parts of the globe, but they are all similarly not coping, if not downright freefalling. Bonnie, once a boxer, is now working as a bouncer in LA. She does find herself making her way back to NY, where she is forced to confront her grief, the shame over her last match, and the feelings she’s been long harboring for her former mentor, Pavel. Avery works as a lawyer in London where she is married to Chiti, an older woman who was once her therapist. Chiti wants a child but Avery isn’t ready, in fact, ever since Nicky’s death she has been withdrawing from her marriage. Chiti has noticed but mostly relies on therapyspeak to remind Avery that she too has lost Nicky (as if being reminded of that would help avery…). Avery finds escape in rigorously attending AA meetings. There she meets a younger man, a poet, and their attraction is mutual and has disastrous consequences for Avery’s marriage. Lucky is a model who has spent most of her adulthood in relishing a carefree partier lifestyle. But Nicky’s death has changed things, and now Lucky is not so much as partying because it’s fun, but because as a means of oblivion. After screwing up her latest gig in Paris, she travels to London. Her and Avery’s relationship is more frayed than ever and the two sisters end up driving a further wedge in their bond. Lucky sees Avery as sanctimonious, smothering, and a hypocrite, whereas Avery is exasperated by Lucky’s careless attitude to others and herself. Eventually the three sisters reunite in NY, but their reunion is far from smooth.
The prologue serves as a character introduction, one that, through the use of literary devices such as alliteration, succeeded in lending this tale of the Blue sisters the rhythms of a fairy tale. Despite the novel taking place over a fairly contained period of time, the characters have a lot of history with each other and a lot of personal baggage, yet, these forays into the past never weighed down the narrative, and if anything they made the characters more rounded. We come to understand why they act the way they do, the origin of some of their insecurities and anxieties, and why some of them try to escape their grief by avoiding what they once loved, sabotaging their relationships, and opting for self-destructive ‘coping mechanisms’. Bonnie is the more grounded of the sisters, and her arc is not a downward spiral, as it is for Avery or Lucky’s. Still, Bonnie feels responsible for Nicky’s death, and is unsure whether she can box like she used to. Avery has a tendency to shut out other people, something that makes her a hard character to get into. Yet, we can see how hard she has tried to make up for her parents, to look out for her sisters in all the ways they didn’t. She also believes that she was the one to have let down Nicky, but is not fully able to admit this, so she lets her hurt and guilt fester. She misdirects her anger towards Lucky, who is also as lost as she is.
I thought that the novel was very self-assured, and that for the most part, it sticks the landing. Sure, one could say that Mellors was trying to cram in too much into the novel. Take the Blue sisters jobs…they are giving ‘try out different careers with Barbie’ (lawyer, model, boxer). They are also too beautiful and not-like-other people at times (Avery and her tattoos…sure, cool aesthetics, but it didn’t seem in line with her character). Even their mother, a character whose presence is mostly relegated to the outskirts of the narrative is subjected to this beautification: “at the time, she had silky auburn hair down to her waist and a beautiful, tulip-shaped face”. While I understood Lucky being beautiful, and her having a troubled relationship with her beauty (she takes it for granted, especially when it comes to what she can get away with, for instance, her beauty glamorizes how unpleasant, rude, and selfish she can be; she is also burdened by it, with other people unwilling to truly see her, or becoming obsessed with her because of her looks, or thinking she is a dumb shallow blonde) when it came to the other characters…these descriptions weakened the novel. They were syrupy and somewhat affected.
Avery was the type of lesbian character that feels that has been written by a non lesbian, as in, the writer, in their attempts to avoid clichés about lesbians, ends up writing the straightest lesbian character ever. I did not understand why Avery is made into a lesbian character, given that the person she has an ‘affair’ with is a man…one thing is someone who is still for whatever internal or external reasons unable to identify and/or live as a lesbian, but Avery has been in a relationship with a woman for a long time, she describes herself as a lesbian who is interested in being with women…so why have her cheat with a man? A man she is insanely attracted to. It was a Choice™, one that seemed to me to exist only for dramatic effect (not only she cheats, but she cheats with a man!). Their sex scene also consolidated my perception of her as a very straight character. I just wish the author could have made her bi, queer, or pan. I also find the whole image of the (outwardly) strait-laced lesbian a bit of a bore, but thankfully Mellors does manage to make Avery into a flawed yet complex character. I didn’t like how the cheating plotline is handled,.
Lucky also skates close to being a bit of a cliché, but thankfully the narrative doesn’t romanticize her self-destructive ways. I did found that musician subplot very cheesy—it felt like something straight out of Hollywood—and I thought it was an unnecessary add-on. Similarly, the epilogue, despite the author's heartfelt acknowledgments, felt more corny than touching.
However, these aspects didn't significantly detract from my overall enjoyment of the novel. I still loved it (which just goes to show how good mellors can be). The characters and their dynamics were compelling, and I particularly admired Mellors' prose style and ability to establish atmosphere. Mellors also adeptly balanced action and introspection, ensuring that the story never felt either rushed or slow-paced. Additionally, I appreciated that certain elements remained unresolved, such as the sisters’ complex relationship with their mother, adding depth to the narrative. Mellors' portrayal of grief is heartfelt and authentic. Through the lens of the surviving sisters' memories and flashbacks, she paints a vivid picture of Nicky, allowing readers not only to empathise with her but to miss her presence. Mellors' depiction of addiction and the journey to recovery feels genuine and relatable. She captures the struggles and setbacks with honesty, which in addition to making for a candid portrayal of addiction, also made the sisters' experiences all the more compelling and real.
I can definitely see myself re-reading this as I found it to be a captivating tale. It had dramatic moments and plenty of emotional beats. Evocative and thoughtful, Blue Sisters made for a compelling read, full of imperfect people and fraught relationships, all underscored by an undeniable heart. I think readers who are less averse to sentimentality than I am will likely adore it even more than I did. I look forward to Mellors' next novel, hoping that it will align more closely with the style and depth of Blue Sisters than C&F.
I'm grateful for this arc and (depending on my funds) will purchase a copy of my own once it is released.
September 7, 2025
dysfunctional family, sisterhood, substance abuse, addiction, compulsive disorders, grief and loss, coming to terms with our lives. The writing is quite addictive. The characters stand out and are quite realistic. If you love books by Taylor Jenkins Reid, you will definitely love this one!
June 21, 2024
Poorly written, full of clichés and overwriting. I’m tired of lesbian characters always needing to have sex with or desire for a man. It’s unnecessary and lesbophobic. The end is predictable, not even wholesome and the last paragraph being the baby’s perspective is just bad.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 21, 2025
I guess this was the year to read about complicated sibling relationships. I might believe in restoring sibling bonds from 'Intermezzo' by Sally Rooney to Blue Sisters. This was a beautiful and heartbreaking story of sisterhood and grief. When one of the four sisters unexpectedly dies, the family is torn apart, finding ways to grieve--sometimes destructive, other times tender.
A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend? Yet this status is used again and again to connote the highest intimacy. True sisterhood is not the same as friendship. You don't choose each other, and there is no furtive period of getting to know each other. You are a part of each other, right from the start. Look at an umbilical cord—tough, sinuous, unlovely, yet essential—and compare it to a friendship bracelet of brightly woven thread. That is the difference between a sister and a friend
Avery, the eldest, is a recovering heroin addict—a highly successful lawyer living with her wife Bonnie in London. Avery is feeling stuck in her marriage. Finding it impossible to accept her younger sister's death, she turns to erratic ways of comping. It's more than her sister's death; it's the reality of life; it's deciding whether or not to have a child; it's dealing with the trauma of being the mother to the girls when her mother took a backseat. The girl's father was an alcoholic, forcing their mother to handle him full-time. In response, Avery protected her sisters, taught them life skills, and raised them like her children.
Their mother wasn’t really a mother, and Avery covered for her; their father wasn’t really a father, and their mother covered for him. Trying to change them now would be needlessly painful for everyone
Most people go through life never knowing what it’s like to have a calling, one that asks you to sacrifice the pleasure of the moment for the potential of a dream that may not be realized for years, if at all. It sets you apart from others, whether you want it to or not. It can be grueling, lonely, and punishing, but, if it is really your calling, it is not a choice
Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles. She's been in love with her trainer her entire career but never had the guts to tell him. Her coping mechanism was fighting the next match, training harder, and battling on. Bonnie, in some ways, was closest to Nicky, the sister who passed away—she's left with a level of guilt she shares with no one.
The youngest sister, Lucky, modeling since the age of 16, is struggling the most. She parties hard, finds work more demanding since the loss of Nicky, and struggles to put into words the depth of her grief.
When their mother informs them that their apartment is being sold, the sisters are forced to come together, rehash broken feelings, and confront what's left of Nicky's life.
I don't know much about addiction, but I found it shocking to learn (knowing this is fiction) that three of the four sisters struggled with addiction. It was an addiction that took Nicky's life, an addiction that brought Avery to rock bottom, and Lucky, continuously working in the throes of addiction.
When it came to their father:
He was the only man in the house, but he
also was the house. They lived inside his moods
But their family wasn’t normal. Addiction whirred through all of them like electricity through a circuit
Blue Sisters does a brilliant job of fleshing out each character with enough information to appreciate their journey. Some have likened this to a 2024 version of 'Little Women'--I approve!
Not every family comes out of grief stronger, but author Coco Mellors challenges the reader to appreciate the ebb and flow of pain. When resentments and anger are resolved, so much beauty comes from their love and sisterhood. I believed and was devoted to their recovery, whatever way that looked.
This was a tender story of sisterhood woven between grief and recovery.
4.5/5 stars
A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend? Yet this status is used again and again to connote the highest intimacy. True sisterhood is not the same as friendship. You don't choose each other, and there is no furtive period of getting to know each other. You are a part of each other, right from the start. Look at an umbilical cord—tough, sinuous, unlovely, yet essential—and compare it to a friendship bracelet of brightly woven thread. That is the difference between a sister and a friend
Avery, the eldest, is a recovering heroin addict—a highly successful lawyer living with her wife Bonnie in London. Avery is feeling stuck in her marriage. Finding it impossible to accept her younger sister's death, she turns to erratic ways of comping. It's more than her sister's death; it's the reality of life; it's deciding whether or not to have a child; it's dealing with the trauma of being the mother to the girls when her mother took a backseat. The girl's father was an alcoholic, forcing their mother to handle him full-time. In response, Avery protected her sisters, taught them life skills, and raised them like her children.
Their mother wasn’t really a mother, and Avery covered for her; their father wasn’t really a father, and their mother covered for him. Trying to change them now would be needlessly painful for everyone
Most people go through life never knowing what it’s like to have a calling, one that asks you to sacrifice the pleasure of the moment for the potential of a dream that may not be realized for years, if at all. It sets you apart from others, whether you want it to or not. It can be grueling, lonely, and punishing, but, if it is really your calling, it is not a choice
Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles. She's been in love with her trainer her entire career but never had the guts to tell him. Her coping mechanism was fighting the next match, training harder, and battling on. Bonnie, in some ways, was closest to Nicky, the sister who passed away—she's left with a level of guilt she shares with no one.
The youngest sister, Lucky, modeling since the age of 16, is struggling the most. She parties hard, finds work more demanding since the loss of Nicky, and struggles to put into words the depth of her grief.
When their mother informs them that their apartment is being sold, the sisters are forced to come together, rehash broken feelings, and confront what's left of Nicky's life.
I don't know much about addiction, but I found it shocking to learn (knowing this is fiction) that three of the four sisters struggled with addiction. It was an addiction that took Nicky's life, an addiction that brought Avery to rock bottom, and Lucky, continuously working in the throes of addiction.
When it came to their father:
He was the only man in the house, but he
also was the house. They lived inside his moods
But their family wasn’t normal. Addiction whirred through all of them like electricity through a circuit
Blue Sisters does a brilliant job of fleshing out each character with enough information to appreciate their journey. Some have likened this to a 2024 version of 'Little Women'--I approve!
Not every family comes out of grief stronger, but author Coco Mellors challenges the reader to appreciate the ebb and flow of pain. When resentments and anger are resolved, so much beauty comes from their love and sisterhood. I believed and was devoted to their recovery, whatever way that looked.
This was a tender story of sisterhood woven between grief and recovery.
4.5/5 stars
January 29, 2025
5 stars!
An unforgettable, character-driven story.
Sisterhood. A topic I am often drawn to. In this novel, we meet three adult sisters who are grieving the loss of the fourth sister who died a year before. The year since her death has been hard on them, causing a distancing in their relationship instead of a closeness. This story examines them navigating their grief and moving back toward each other.
The writing was exquisite! I was completely engrossed and consumed by the beautiful prose. I cared for these sisters immediately. The narratives grabbed at my heartstrings from the start and never let up. Through the complicated and layered sister relationships, the heavy and damaged family dynamic is slowly revealed. Though the girls parents are introduced, their parents are not a central aspect of this story, but the aftermath of their parenting style largely is.
This is a slow burn, heavy and deeply moving story. It is one to be savoured and read in larger chunks of time, rather than picked up quickly here and there. The author explores the messiness and all the little intricacies of sisterhood in such an emotional and realistic way. I felt so close to these characters and hoped for a positive outcome for all of them. Each chapter is told from a sister’s perspective, yet the main focus of the book was the relationships they each had with one another, rather than their individual journeys.
This was an incredible book that has earned a spot on my 2025 Favourites List. I hope you get a chance to read it!
⚠️ There are many trigger warnings, including addiction, overdose and infidelity that I urge you to review before picking this up.
An unforgettable, character-driven story.
Sisterhood. A topic I am often drawn to. In this novel, we meet three adult sisters who are grieving the loss of the fourth sister who died a year before. The year since her death has been hard on them, causing a distancing in their relationship instead of a closeness. This story examines them navigating their grief and moving back toward each other.
The writing was exquisite! I was completely engrossed and consumed by the beautiful prose. I cared for these sisters immediately. The narratives grabbed at my heartstrings from the start and never let up. Through the complicated and layered sister relationships, the heavy and damaged family dynamic is slowly revealed. Though the girls parents are introduced, their parents are not a central aspect of this story, but the aftermath of their parenting style largely is.
This is a slow burn, heavy and deeply moving story. It is one to be savoured and read in larger chunks of time, rather than picked up quickly here and there. The author explores the messiness and all the little intricacies of sisterhood in such an emotional and realistic way. I felt so close to these characters and hoped for a positive outcome for all of them. Each chapter is told from a sister’s perspective, yet the main focus of the book was the relationships they each had with one another, rather than their individual journeys.
This was an incredible book that has earned a spot on my 2025 Favourites List. I hope you get a chance to read it!
⚠️ There are many trigger warnings, including addiction, overdose and infidelity that I urge you to review before picking this up.
July 21, 2025
2.5 ★
this book explores the grief of the three Blue sisters,Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky, as they navigate life after the death of their sister, Nicky. when they learn that their parents plan to sell their childhood home, they reunite, not ready to give up on what they have left of their sister.
i want to start by saying this is not a bad book. for the most part, i liked the writing. but i couldn't feel it. because of that, i couldn't connect with the characters. i didn't feel the pain and the grief. i mostly felt annoyed, sad once or twice, but nothing more.
: ̗̀➛characters
in most literary fiction books, there's a realness to the characters, as though they could step off the page and exist in the world alongside you. but in this book, the characters felt just a little off. there was something uncanny about them.
• Avery
the oldest, Avery, has always been the mother figure of her younger sisters. for the most part, i enjoyed reading from her perspective. i found her to be pretty compelling, but some of her decisions frustrated me. i know that's the point, characters should be flawed, but in a character-driven novel, i want to root for them. with Avery, beyond just being mildly intrigued or annoyed, i didn't feel much else.
• Bonnie
she was my favorite part of the book. whenever the story shifted to her, i felt excited to keep reading. while again, i had difficulty connecting with the characters, if i had been in Bonnie's POV a bit longer, i'm sure it would've happened with her. second oldest, Bonnie is the shy, soft-spoken one, which is at odds with her former career, a boxer. i thought she was really interesting, and the Pavel storyline made me feel so warm and fuzzy inside.
• Nicky
we never get to meet her. she exists only in memories, in the spaces her sisters try to fill. if we had a prologue in her POV, just a glimpse of her before she was gone, it could have made a big difference. from what I learned through her sisters, i liked her. i just wish i could've loved her. instead, her death felt distant, and the grief of her sisters never quite reached me.
• Lucky
youngest sister, and the one i did not feel any connection to. whenever i got to her chapters, i took a break, i just couldn't bring myself to care. the annoyance mostly came from her parts; i just did not enjoy reading about her at all. i felt proud of her once and that's the only positive emotion i had towards her.
: ̗̀➛writing
as i mentioned, it wasn't bad. in fact, there were lines i genuinely loved.
but for some reason, the prose didn't resonate with me. i wanted more depth, something to bring out more emotions in me. i felt way too distanced from the story. i found some details the author chose to write to be unnecessary, or maybe that's the result of my detachment from the characters.
: ̗̀➛overall
i went into this expecting a painful 4-5 star read. sadly, it was not meant to be. the grief of the characters, which was supposed to be the main focus of the book, felt hollow. this book was more about addiction as a coping mechanism, but the way the characters overcame it felt unnatural to me.
this is not a book i'll be thinking about. it gets a 2.5—for Bonnie, and for a few quotes that stuck with me.
pre-read
i have so many nice, happy books on my tbr, but why would i choose them when i could go for a painful read instead?
this book explores the grief of the three Blue sisters,Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky, as they navigate life after the death of their sister, Nicky. when they learn that their parents plan to sell their childhood home, they reunite, not ready to give up on what they have left of their sister.
i want to start by saying this is not a bad book. for the most part, i liked the writing. but i couldn't feel it. because of that, i couldn't connect with the characters. i didn't feel the pain and the grief. i mostly felt annoyed, sad once or twice, but nothing more.
: ̗̀➛characters
in most literary fiction books, there's a realness to the characters, as though they could step off the page and exist in the world alongside you. but in this book, the characters felt just a little off. there was something uncanny about them.
• Avery
the oldest, Avery, has always been the mother figure of her younger sisters. for the most part, i enjoyed reading from her perspective. i found her to be pretty compelling, but some of her decisions frustrated me. i know that's the point, characters should be flawed, but in a character-driven novel, i want to root for them. with Avery, beyond just being mildly intrigued or annoyed, i didn't feel much else.
• Bonnie
she was my favorite part of the book. whenever the story shifted to her, i felt excited to keep reading. while again, i had difficulty connecting with the characters, if i had been in Bonnie's POV a bit longer, i'm sure it would've happened with her. second oldest, Bonnie is the shy, soft-spoken one, which is at odds with her former career, a boxer. i thought she was really interesting, and the Pavel storyline made me feel so warm and fuzzy inside.
• Nicky
we never get to meet her. she exists only in memories, in the spaces her sisters try to fill. if we had a prologue in her POV, just a glimpse of her before she was gone, it could have made a big difference. from what I learned through her sisters, i liked her. i just wish i could've loved her. instead, her death felt distant, and the grief of her sisters never quite reached me.
• Lucky
youngest sister, and the one i did not feel any connection to. whenever i got to her chapters, i took a break, i just couldn't bring myself to care. the annoyance mostly came from her parts; i just did not enjoy reading about her at all. i felt proud of her once and that's the only positive emotion i had towards her.
: ̗̀➛writing
as i mentioned, it wasn't bad. in fact, there were lines i genuinely loved.
“It was easy to love someone in the beginnings and endings; it was all the time in between that was so hard.”
but for some reason, the prose didn't resonate with me. i wanted more depth, something to bring out more emotions in me. i felt way too distanced from the story. i found some details the author chose to write to be unnecessary, or maybe that's the result of my detachment from the characters.
: ̗̀➛overall
i went into this expecting a painful 4-5 star read. sadly, it was not meant to be. the grief of the characters, which was supposed to be the main focus of the book, felt hollow. this book was more about addiction as a coping mechanism, but the way the characters overcame it felt unnatural to me.
this is not a book i'll be thinking about. it gets a 2.5—for Bonnie, and for a few quotes that stuck with me.
“As long as you are alive, it is never too late to be found.”
pre-read
i have so many nice, happy books on my tbr, but why would i choose them when i could go for a painful read instead?
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