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3.23 AVERAGE
3.23 AVERAGE
Abigail's sister Catherine became 'Cleo', an internationally famous model, after being spotted in her teens and Abi was left never feeling like she could do anything that would make her parents as proud as Cleo did.
With a grown up daughter going for her gap year, Abi takes up Cleo's invitation when she invites Abi to stay in her London house with her 2 girls and husband for 8 weeks over summer. Abi sees a chance to reconnect with her sister after years of barely seeing each other and only fleeting emails.
Instead she ends up mostly ending up as an unpaid nanny and barely seeing her sister as she struggles to come to terms with finding the sister she grew up with under Cleo somewhere.
Mostly this book, and the people in it, make a lot of poor choices and infuriating rationalisations for a number of situations that could have been very easily avoided. Most characters are one dimensional and you don't really care about any of them because their personalities are so wishy washy and their justifications are so stupid and inconsistent you wonder how anyone ever thought the plot was cohesive unless they made their characters all so stupid.
Every time you think Abi's actually gonna do something interesting, she ends up backing down and we end up right back at the start. This is cyclical and happens over and over in more and more irritating situations without any real pay off. Even at the climax, Abi backs down with almost zero character development.
The romance is stupid and unnecessary. John and Abi come across as two people who fall in love off the back of nothing but loneliness and I can't imagine that would ever work out.
With a grown up daughter going for her gap year, Abi takes up Cleo's invitation when she invites Abi to stay in her London house with her 2 girls and husband for 8 weeks over summer. Abi sees a chance to reconnect with her sister after years of barely seeing each other and only fleeting emails.
Instead she ends up mostly ending up as an unpaid nanny and barely seeing her sister as she struggles to come to terms with finding the sister she grew up with under Cleo somewhere.
Mostly this book, and the people in it, make a lot of poor choices and infuriating rationalisations for a number of situations that could have been very easily avoided. Most characters are one dimensional and you don't really care about any of them because their personalities are so wishy washy and their justifications are so stupid and inconsistent you wonder how anyone ever thought the plot was cohesive unless they made their characters all so stupid.
Spoiler
I think you're supposed to sympathise with Abi or consider her hard done by, but given she claims to never really see her sister after the age of about 16, you have to wonder how she's gotten herself in this funk, even with having Phoebe so young and ending up a single mother. It seems more like she spent her life dwelling on something she could have probably done something about without much interference from "Cleo" if she really wanted to.Every time you think Abi's actually gonna do something interesting, she ends up backing down and we end up right back at the start. This is cyclical and happens over and over in more and more irritating situations without any real pay off. Even at the climax, Abi backs down with almost zero character development.
The romance is stupid and unnecessary. John and Abi come across as two people who fall in love off the back of nothing but loneliness and I can't imagine that would ever work out.
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This story looks at the labels siblings are given in childhood and the effect they have on each sibling through to adulthood.
Cleo and Abi were pretty much normal sisters until Cleo got discovered and shot to fame. The story takes place many years later when Cleo invites Abi to spend the summer with her family in London. Is this the reconciliation Abi has secretly been longing for or has Cleo got ulterior motives?
An easy read exploring this sort of sibling rivalry. We get to know each member of the family through Abi's eyes and journey with her to her ultimate resolution of the sibling relationship. Even though Cleo is one of the most self-centered people you can meet, you can't help but feel a bit sorry for her as she has no idea of what the important things in life are and destroys so much good in her life. Abi undergoes a metamorphosis of sorts - where Cleo is always "me, me" Abi always puts others first - now she starts to realize she is important and she can put herself first at times without the world falling apart.
Cleo and Abi were pretty much normal sisters until Cleo got discovered and shot to fame. The story takes place many years later when Cleo invites Abi to spend the summer with her family in London. Is this the reconciliation Abi has secretly been longing for or has Cleo got ulterior motives?
An easy read exploring this sort of sibling rivalry. We get to know each member of the family through Abi's eyes and journey with her to her ultimate resolution of the sibling relationship. Even though Cleo is one of the most self-centered people you can meet, you can't help but feel a bit sorry for her as she has no idea of what the important things in life are and destroys so much good in her life. Abi undergoes a metamorphosis of sorts - where Cleo is always "me, me" Abi always puts others first - now she starts to realize she is important and she can put herself first at times without the world falling apart.
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Content Warnings
Moderate: Infidelity
Minor: Alcohol
Actual star rating 2.5. I absolutely adore Jane Fallon's work normally, but my god what was this!?! Yes, the characters were intriguing and Abi, the main character was lovable....but where was the character development and the story development!? Why was there such an ambiguous ending!? I didn't realise the ending was the end...there's so many questions...it's left so open. The young girls were the main stars of the show I feel, and that's only because their character developed and changed with the course of events. The morals of the story are all wrong as well. Most definitely not the best work by her đ However it did make me laugh on a few occasions and I found myself relating to a fair bit of it, hence the 2.5 stars.
Jane Fallon is an author Iâve enjoyed before. I remember picking up Getting Rid of Matthew a few years back now and I really enjoyed the fresh take on affairs, how Helen was trying to get rid of Matthew, the man she was having an affair with rather than trying to take him from his wife. I then read Got You Back which was even better, I really loved that one. I somehow skipped Foursome, though I have it on my shelf, and so when I got a proof copy of The Ugly Sister I dove right in, hoping for something in a similar vein to her first two novels.
The Ugly Sister is interesting. Iâll give Fallon that. I like books about sibling rivalry and done right it can be a brilliant read however for the entire time I was reading The Ugly Sister, it felt off-kilter somehow. The writing style was off with a mix of third-person present and past tense and itâs as if Fallon couldnât decide which worked better (for the record, if youâre writing in third-person, past is always best), the characters were awful people (awful people!!!) and the plot was contrived at best. I donât know what I was expecting, but what I got wasnât it. There was barely any sisterly bonding of any kind, which I suspect is expected, really since Abi and Cleo are as far apart as the North and South pole, but when thereâs a novel about sisters you expect some forward-movement, some break to happen in their relationship, some acknowledgement they were/are sisters and there was none. They never even really had it out because Abi was miles too meek to actually say anything, ever.
What really got my goat was Abi herself. Cleo is billed as being a cow. Thatâs a given. But, boy, Abi is a nightmare herself. Sheâs hardly an angel and her cop-out that the only reason she never âdidâ anything with her life was because she could never, ever top Cleoâs achievements was petty. I understand that sisters compare themselves to each other to some extent but to blame your sister because you couldnât get off your lazy bum to get a better job or make a better life for yourself is ridiculous. Iâm surprised it wasnât Cleoâs fault Abi got pregnant. I mean the novel just read like two thirteen-year-old teenage girls slugging it out over who could prove their life was better/more fulfilled. At times, I couldnât comprehend how Abby could be the mother of a fully-grown daughter because she acted as if she herself was the daughter at times.
The Ugly Sister just didnât work for me at all. I got bored of Abi, bored of Cleo, bored of the so-called rivalry. Bored of Abi âwanting to sayâ all of these things, but never getting the courage to actually say them for Godâs sake. I liked the way Fallon portrayed her affairs in previous novels but Abi hankering after her brother-in-law was borderline gross. Weâre hearing how sheâs blushing/stuttering/making a fool of herself while Jon was still oblivious. All Abi was missing was a peep hole, to make her the ultimate stalker. Neither sister was better than the other and none of the characters â bar the kids â were characters I cared about or wanted to know more about. They were all terrible people, and the whole novel just left a bad taste in my mouth. Coupled with the amateurish writing (Fallon can write so much better; either that or my memories of her first two novels are wrong) it was a recipe for disaster for me. Never mind the ugly sisters, this book was somewhat ugly. (Despite itâs rather attractive cover, I will admit.) Hereâs hoping Fallon does better with her next effort. I hope she gets back to her days of Got You Back and Getting Rid of Matthew.
The Ugly Sister is interesting. Iâll give Fallon that. I like books about sibling rivalry and done right it can be a brilliant read however for the entire time I was reading The Ugly Sister, it felt off-kilter somehow. The writing style was off with a mix of third-person present and past tense and itâs as if Fallon couldnât decide which worked better (for the record, if youâre writing in third-person, past is always best), the characters were awful people (awful people!!!) and the plot was contrived at best. I donât know what I was expecting, but what I got wasnât it. There was barely any sisterly bonding of any kind, which I suspect is expected, really since Abi and Cleo are as far apart as the North and South pole, but when thereâs a novel about sisters you expect some forward-movement, some break to happen in their relationship, some acknowledgement they were/are sisters and there was none. They never even really had it out because Abi was miles too meek to actually say anything, ever.
What really got my goat was Abi herself. Cleo is billed as being a cow. Thatâs a given. But, boy, Abi is a nightmare herself. Sheâs hardly an angel and her cop-out that the only reason she never âdidâ anything with her life was because she could never, ever top Cleoâs achievements was petty. I understand that sisters compare themselves to each other to some extent but to blame your sister because you couldnât get off your lazy bum to get a better job or make a better life for yourself is ridiculous. Iâm surprised it wasnât Cleoâs fault Abi got pregnant. I mean the novel just read like two thirteen-year-old teenage girls slugging it out over who could prove their life was better/more fulfilled. At times, I couldnât comprehend how Abby could be the mother of a fully-grown daughter because she acted as if she herself was the daughter at times.
The Ugly Sister just didnât work for me at all. I got bored of Abi, bored of Cleo, bored of the so-called rivalry. Bored of Abi âwanting to sayâ all of these things, but never getting the courage to actually say them for Godâs sake. I liked the way Fallon portrayed her affairs in previous novels but Abi hankering after her brother-in-law was borderline gross. Weâre hearing how sheâs blushing/stuttering/making a fool of herself while Jon was still oblivious. All Abi was missing was a peep hole, to make her the ultimate stalker. Neither sister was better than the other and none of the characters â bar the kids â were characters I cared about or wanted to know more about. They were all terrible people, and the whole novel just left a bad taste in my mouth. Coupled with the amateurish writing (Fallon can write so much better; either that or my memories of her first two novels are wrong) it was a recipe for disaster for me. Never mind the ugly sisters, this book was somewhat ugly. (Despite itâs rather attractive cover, I will admit.) Hereâs hoping Fallon does better with her next effort. I hope she gets back to her days of Got You Back and Getting Rid of Matthew.
too sad sack of a heroine. can't root for anybody and their fake problems. "my kids are spoiled and rude however will i teach them how to behave?" "my sisters a selfish bitch and has been for the past 20 years how do i change the relationshiP??" "i'm having inappropriate feelings for my bro-in-law!!!"
ugh
ugh