Blue Sisters: A Read with Jenna Pick: A Novel

This is the most poorly narrated audiobook I have ever heard. I legitimately could not make it through longer than 10 minutes.

It made me laugh and cry. A terrific read on life, relationships, addiction and daily struggles.

This narrator is THE worst I have EVER heard! It’s very robotic and choppy. Even AI sounds better than this! Horrible.

This is the complicated sibling history of the Blue sisters. They grew up in a small household with an alcoholic, volatile father and an emotionally distant mother. The four sisters all forged a different path but remained tied in a visceral way to their sisters. Avery, the oldest, was an attorney, then Bonnie, a dedicated boxer, Nicky, a gifted schoolteacher and Lucky, an internationally successful model who left high school at the age of 15. When one of the sisters dies, the remaining three deal with their devastation both individually and then as a group when their mother decides to sell their childhood home and its memories.

Two of these sisters deal with addiction issues that threaten to end their careers, if not their lives. The sister who died was perhaps the most available to all of them, which heightens their grief. The glimpses into their parental connections lead to the knowledge that they all played the role unintentionally assigned to them from their birth order.

I thought this novel was very repetitive. I didn't feel a connection to their grief and relationships as I thought I should have. Avery's emotional conversations with their mother at the end of the book deserved more exploration.

Calling this at 120. The prose wants to be literary but mostly is not. The sisters are all contrived avatars for types of sad girls, there only to make a point. It's not terrible, but it certainly isn't good either. (There is a main character named Bonnie, a rare occurrence, so I was rooting for it to be good. I swear.)

I generally do not read these type of books yet I was curious about Read with Jenna and the type of book she recommends.
It was okay and the absolute over the top partying of the youngest sister was appalling as well as fascinating.

Would not recommend.

Three sisters struggle with the death of their fourth along with their own issues. Addiction features heavily.
It was fine if somewhat dull.

I waited an age to read this, being messed around by the library reservation system and finally getting the Kindle edition cheap, and was it worth the wait? Not in the slightest. This is Sweet Valley High for TikTok, where four beautiful, successful women struggle with first world problems while pretending they're not like other girls (newsflash, honey): 'Blue-eyed, blond-haired, and, most importantly, female, Bonnie was not exactly typical bouncer material.'

The four pretentiously named sisters are all overgrown children, especially the eldest ironically, and I only warmed to them in the final chapters of the book. The mother is by far the most human and honest character, but she's only there to flip a switch in one of her daughters and bring them all around. Everyone is an addict - I'm guessing we're blaming the alcoholic father - even though Avery was only on heroin for like a week in her 20s and kicked the habit instantly, but I think the author secretly believes that getting wasted is 'cool', like smoking. The only exception is Bonnie the world champion boxer, who was groomed by her trainer instead. The reason for the sisters' excess is that the one of the number tragically died from an overdose of painkillers, because suffering the excruciating agony of endometriosis to become a mother is a fair trade, apparently ('She wanted to be a mother more than she wanted to be free.)

The eldest sister Avery lives in London with her wife, but the author or her editor apparently decided that, nah. everyone is American at heart, and have the British Asian wife talk about finding 'Plan B' (not available in the UK) in the 'trash can'. But then none of the characters are exactly believable, and we only learn about them through the author's cod psychological 'tell don't show' narrative (she can't even let the reader work out what 'coq no vin' might be without explaining). I really did have flashbacks to my Francine Pascal years, only I'm no longer a teen impressed by beautiful hair and 'bad girls' smoking in secret, sorry.

At least I only paid 99p!

A family drama focusing on the life of 4 sisters who grew up with not such great parents. Too much focus on the trauma and not enough on coping and recovering from trauma.

I enjoyed this book! It was about three sisters - well, technically 4 because one sister had passed away. You get a history of all the sisters and they were so different and yet so similar. It was very easy to keep track of and a great drama. Addiction runs in the family and the oldest sister is a lesbian and ends up going through rehab to get her life back together. She gets married and is "happy" yet still shoplifts. Her wife wants to have a child and that seems to send her spiraling. Meanwhile the middle child is a boxer and stops boxing and is also in love with her boxing coach and she just runs away from him. She doesn't necessarily have an addition to substances, but is addicted to working out and the "high" she gets from boxing. And then there's the youngest who is a model since she was 15. And living the partying life. She ends up getting her life together. Their dad was an addict. And their mother just seemed to be emotionally absent. In the end, the oldest sister ends up talking with her and learns that she never really wanted kids. And that she also dealt with post-partum. Just a story about a family with issues and the fights and trials and tribulations along the way, but in the end, they all end up OK. I enjoyed the ride and hearing about this family.

A story of four sisters and their family trauma.

Blue Sisters tells the story of 3 sisters who are struggling to come to terms with their lives and their relationships after the death of their youngest sister, Nicky.
Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky return to NYC where they were raised, once their mother says she is selling the NY apartment. They each have their own problems:
Avery is recovering from heroin addiction, Bonnie is a former boxer-currently working as a bouncer because she walked away after a loss, and Lucky is a high-fashion model who parties too much.
They are each dealing with their grief in their own way, and it is sometimes destructive.
This is a story of family, grief, struggles, and coming together to find common bonds.
Difficult at times to read, but I really enjoyed the epilogue!

There’s a lot of dysfunction in the Blue family but since Nicky’s death, the remaining three sisters have spiraled further down and away from each other in their grief. When their mother sends them all an email announcing the sale of their childhood home in New York, they all return to sort through Nicky’s things and heal some wounds. A little long and sometimes preachy, Coco Mellor’s Blue Sisters still manages to be entertaining with compelling characters and a great sense of humor.

The narration is absolutely horrendous! It’s so robotic. I’ve listened to hundreds of audiobooks and the narration of this one is the worst I’ve ever heard?