Review: Sisterhood Everlasting (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) by Ann Brashares

**** 4 Fireworks

"I remember my mom once told me that a good family is built for leaving, because that is what children must do. And I've wondered many times, is that also what a good friendship is supposed to be build for?"


Sisterhood Everlasting returns us to Tibby, Carmen, Lena, and Bridget. They are all almost thirty, their friendship has more or less fallen apart, and each of them feels that absence to their soul's core. Out of the blue and after two years with almost no communication from her new home in Australia, Tibby sends them all tickets for a reunion in Greece. I can't describe the tragedy that strikes while the girls are in Greece without spoiler-ing, but it is world changing. The rest of the novel follows each of them as they deal with the aftermath of this personal earthquake.

The novel follows the same overall narrative arch: the girls are separated for some reason, they go through some personal traumadramallama, one of them reaches out to the others, they realize that they are MORE together. At times, I wanted to throttle each of the girls and tell them to DO something with their lives. I don't think they should forgo the grieving process, but letting it become all consuming made it painful to experience as a reader. Fortunately, Brashares has a way with words, and away with these four friends, and she managed to salvage the story well before the final curtain fell. 

Instead of the style used in the earlier stories, with chapters rotating between each of the four girls, this book presents a choppier format. Each chapter offers vignette-length snippets from several of the girls. Some of my fellow "Pants"-readers complained that this was jarring, but I feel like it fits the characters at this point in their lives. They are discombobulated, and this method puts the reader into that same mindset.


Almost a decade ago, Brashares published the first Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book. I was 23, technically "too old" for it, but I've always been a sucker for oddball characters who create their own chosen kin. This book pleasantly/oddly puts the characters at only two years younger than me. So, what I'm trying to say is this - the series is technically YA, but if you've ever had friendships that came and went (and maybe came again), then this book and series are for you.

Blogger Sidenote: When I read the original books, I most often identified with Tibby. I was the weird, creative one in most of my chosen-kin groups, and the one who built the home for people to come back to. In this book, I almost solely connected with Bee. Not her pregnancy, but her restlessness and wanderlust and need to grown up, but in a safe harbor. Hmm...

Review-let:: Partials by Dan Wells

I'm not sure of the technicalities of reviewing a book in two places, and I did receive the ARC for this book from my HB freelance editing job. However, I have to share a couple of quotes and mention (maybe tantalize) you all with one of the concepts from the book.

Partials - Dan Wells

The lines I marked whilst reading:

"What do you think it says about us that we don't have any parents? I don't mean us, I don't mean kids, I mean no fathers at all--a whole society, two whole societies, with no parents at all. What do you think that's done to us?"

"Hope is not a strategy," said Kira.
"It's not plan A" said Jayden, "and it shouldn't be plan B, but it is every plan see that has ever been made."

"Because I'm a question. Because my entire life, the entire world, is so much bigger than it was a few weeks ago, and noe of it makes sense, and everything in it is dangerous, and somehow I'm at the center of it..."

And because it was funny: "Even paranoid clocks are followed twice a day..."

The concept:
  This book is a dystopian fic, set in 2065, when 99.994% of the world's population has been wiped out by a virus. One way the totalitarian-esque government attempts to fix the population problem is the Hope Act, a mandatory pregnancy law, requiring all women of age to be pregnant as often as possible. With all that's going around in political/news world these days with women's rights in regards to their own bodies, this law somehow made me shudder more than the Partials did.

Read it. Forgive it for the scientific technobabble at points and read it.

Book Review: The Probability of Miracles

The Probability of Miracles by Wendy Wunder

“People keep talking about this unfolding. I can't trust the unfolding, okay? If there is some higher power making origami out of the universe, it hates my guts. I was a fat kid whose parents got divorced, whose father died, and then who got cancer herself. So no. I don't trust how things are going to unfold.”-- Cam

This is a (mostly) realistic YA book. It is not a cancer book, at least not in the same way John Green's The Fault in Our Stars or any of Lurlene McDaniel's books are. This is a book about reclaiming one's life and figuring out who you are, and happens to have a protagonist with cancer.

Cam Cooper grew up in Disneyland, literally; her parents danced in the Polynesian review. She also happens to have late stage cancer, and is out of options. Her mother has forced her to try everything from hypnosis to voo doo to conventional/experimental treatments. As a last ditch effort, her mom uproots the Cam and her sister, taking them to Promise, Maine, a town known for its strange happenings and miracles. Cam is reluctant about this move, to say the least, but ends up becoming friends (and more?) with Asher, a boy from Promise. While her health improves, Cam doesn't see any 'miracles' happening, but decides to create some to make her mom and sister happy. Hijinks, drama, and apologies ensue, followed by a road trip back to her Disney roots.

There is an edge of magical realism in this book. Promise, Maine is somewhere between Stars Hollow and Weetzie Bat's Shangri-L.A., in that it's filled with quirky characters and strange happenings that can almost, but not quite, be explained away logically. Everything that I love about Joan Bauer's plucky and unusual young women protagonists, but with an extra helping of snark. I laughed during every single chapter, even the last one. Much like Cam learns that her life is more than cancer, I forgot that this was a "cancer book" by the end.

There was little in this book that I can honestly say I disliked. Cam had her selfish moments, but these were understandable. (Two stand out: when she tried to fake miracles for her mom and sister and when she realized she was getting sick again. If those aren't reasons to emotionally shut down a little, I don't know what is).


I'm honestly not sure if I would suggest this book to those who are dealing with cancer, or have dealt with it with their loved ones. It's not disrespectful or unrealistic in its portrayal, but not everyone one wants this level of sarcasm and wit when discussing heavy topics.

I would recommend this book to fans of Joan Bauer's work, especially Hope Was Here. If you liked The Fault in Our Stars but want a slightly more uplifting story, you'd like Wunder's book.