A review by euyrdice
Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

emotional reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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? Yet this status is used again and again to connote the highest intimacy. My mother is my best friend. My husband is my best friend. No. 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, and there's no furtive period of getting to know the other. You're part of each other, right from the start. Look at an umbilical cord- tough, sinuous, unlovely, yet essential- and compare it to a friendship bracelet of brightly woven thread. That is the difference between a sister and a friend.

I appear to have mixed feelings on this book, despite my high rating and the knowledge that this novel has entered my favourites shelf. The first half of this book is beautiful, the prose is my favourite thing of the whole novel; there were so many moments I wished to quote above. The sisters are all deliciously interesting, with varying levels of strife but all extremely engaging in their own ways.

However, the latter half seemed to abruptly realise it had to end eventually. I don't think I would say it was rushed per say... but it almost does feel that it needs a whole sequel to satisfyingly resolve every conflict it introduces.
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