A review by afi_whatafireads
Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

dark emotional reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The beauty of this book is in the rawness of grief and the mess that is becoming of humans.
And of sisters, for the joys, fights and love that a sister can have for each other. The beauty of just being able to have sisters of your own.

"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?

True sisterhood, the kind where you grew fingernails in the same womb, were pushed screaming through identical birth canals, is not the same as friendship. You don't choose each other, right from the start."

They say the relationship of sisters are ones that are irreplaceable. It can be messy, almost all of the time, and it can be high in tension at times, but at the end of the day, the pleasure of having sisters are one of the greatest thing life can offer - and I for one can attest to that.

Blue sisters follows the POV of three sisters, maneuvering through their lives from the grief of losing one of their sisters at a young age. At each chapters, we go through the complexity of relationships and sister dynamics, of the struggles of women going through pain that only can be understandable by women, and at the heart of this book, of finding yourself again through grief.

What I liked about this book is how raw it was, how closely relatable it was, especially, when you have sisters of your own. The struggles and guilt from the eldest, the calm in the rage of a storm of the second, the spontaneity of the youngest seeking for validation. Through Avery, Bonnie and Lucky, we see part of ourselves through them, and that's what made this book such an easy read, at most, eventho it navigates through a heavy topic.

The complexity of relationships formed by a single word - sisterhood , and in some sense, the pains of being vulnerable towards each other showed Mellors to be quite a splendid writer. She knows how to engage well with her readers and her characters can be unlikeable and messy and messed up, but they are, human - imperfect but striving everyday to find meaning in life. And even tho sisters, I liked how distinc each characters are, and that, even coming from the same place, no one person is ever the same, which is reflective to sisters in real life. Everyone comes with their own set of struggles, and the complex family dynamics was written well in this book.

What I find I wanted more was more of a closure with their mother. It felt a bit rushed towards the end in some sense, and it would've been perfect if their problems were not just 'settled' like that. But in some sense, that's how families works - as imperfect as they are, we tend to forgive them the easiest.

Overall, this was a read that was fast paced and I had enjoyed it. It opened my eyes in reflecting the relationship with my sisters as well, and even after that, there is still a lingering feeling when I finished this.

4 🌟 for this one! would've bumped into five if it was more thought out towards the end of the book. But oh well.

Thank you to Times Reads for this copy!