The Weird Sisters

Nope, I'm not talking about my sisters, although I suppose we are weird.  Who sits on wet rocks for family pictures?   

This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club and I received a free copy of the book.  The opinions expressed are my own, you can all thank God, because if my opinions represented the masses, we'd all be in big trouble.

The Weird Sisters I'm talking about are 3 sisters in the book by Eleanor Brown, The Weird Sisters.  I had seen this book a while back and forgot about it and when the BlogHer Book Club asked for readers and I was lucky enough to be one of the fast responders, I was excited.

Excited because I've never read a book for money and excited because I had wanted to read the book and now I had to!  And most excited because I MADE IT!  I never get to respond to the book club offers in time because I don't have a smart phone and by the time I respond, it's already full!

One of the first things I liked about the book is the cover.  I am all about covers.  I really do judge books by their covers.  I often look at the cover after I've read a book and suddenly realize just what I'm seeing.  There are often little things that are subtly woven into the cover that we don't bother to see.  I feel bad for covers, actually.

So, upon opening the cover, I was a little dismayed to read the foreword because they talked about how they were a strange group growing up, and their whole family would speak in verse by Shakespeare.  They were a very intellectual family and didn't have a TV.  They read incessantly.  I thought this was a little too weird for me and I almost didn't want to read it because I though these little snippets of verse were going to be annoying.

And at first they were.  But then, she either stopped having them use as much verse, or I got used to it because after a couple of chapters, I could not put this book down and the verse didn't annoy me.

The 3 sisters are called weird in the Shakesperean way of having almost otherworldy powers and knowledge, like they should be sat in awe of.  Not weird, like they didn't have a tv and they were so weird.

The book is written in the first person plural so you are constantly seeing 'we' and 'our' no matter who is telling the story.  And you never really know who is talking because they are all telling the story, except, of course, when there is dialogue.  I really liked that twist.  I've never read a book from that perspective before. It almost makes me think it's non-fiction, like they are sitting with me and telling me their story!

The girls are all adults and have come home because their mother is sick.  Again, when I found this out, I almost didn't want to read it because I'm tired of everyone in books having cancer nowadays.  While this is the whole reason they have reunited and it's a very large part of the book, it's almost like it's in the background and you just say "yeah ok, but then what happened?"  Brown does a great job of telling us just enough about their mother's cancer without making it all doom and gloom.

The two younger sisters, Bean and Cordy, each have come home with a shocking secret.  Rose, who has already been living in their parents' town doesn't have a secret but she is carrying her own burden.  And they don't really talk much to each other or share secrets, so they have somewhat of a cold relationship.  Not mean, just not all hugs and cheer and sharing of everything.

Throughout the book, we see each character share her burden with the others and they all figure out how to deal with them, but in their reserved, not close kind of way.   They deal with their mother's illness, their father's bizarreness and each of their issues in a very dysfunctional but seemingly normal family, in my eyes, anyway.

I really enjoyed this book and I'm ready to read some more of Eleanor Brown's books.  The plot moves along nicely and leaves you wondering what will happen next, and I really had trouble stopping when my eyes were closing every night!  She does a great job of setting the scene and I truly felt like I could step into Barnwell tomorrow because it seemed so real!

Head on over to our discussion on the Blogher Bookclub page and see what everyone else has to say about it!

This was the first book I've read on a kindle.  My sister e-ster let me borrow it to take to France.  I kind of like the idea of the kindle and it was so easy to borrow the book through my library.   I still love a book in my hand, but I am not so opposed to the kindle right now.  However, with the basic kindle, I won't see the covers anymore and as I just said, I do kind of like to see the cover of a book.....