The pick for my IRL book club this month is ‘Blue Sisters’ by Coco Mellors. Now, this is a book that has been absolutely everywhere for quite some time, and a book with an absolutely stunning cover, but it was a book that I was not sure about picking up. However, that is what I love about book club, it makes you read books that you may not normally read.
I enjoyed that this book focused on the four Blue sisters, and how the three are dealing with the grief of losing Nicky, a year before. It is definitely a book that focuses on character and it does do this very well. You do feel you really know these sisters by the end of the book, and how they view their relationship with each other, their parents and their sister Nicky. As well as some of their relationships with the careers they have followed and the people that they may have met along the way.
The chapters alternate between the stories of each of the sisters, and I quite enjoyed this, as I did feel that I wanted to know a little more about each sister as we got to know them. What is quite interesting is I am not sure these characters are particularly loveable; Bonnie was the only one of the sisters that I really sympathised with and I know as we see their history we understand why each sister is like they are, but it was hard to really find them each loveable. It does not make them bad characters, I think, maybe, it seemed like a collection of sisters of real extremes – who between them possibly had more experiences that most families could possibly have in a usual lifetime. But, then I guess that is why we read, to meet characters and experiences we may not necessarily encounter in our day-to-day life.
This book is beautifully written and I did want to finish it, but when I put it down for a couple of days, I did not rush to pick it up – but when I did pick it up to read, I always ended up really bingeing it and finding it hard to put down. Although, it may be the timing of me reading it that impacted how I read it. After all, our personal mood can often impact a book and how we read it.
So, I do have mixed emotions about this book; I saw it somewhere described as the modern ‘Little Women’, and although it could be argued there are some similar themes, I am not sure it has the warmth of that classic. Yet, it is readable, and I can totally understand why it is such a popular book. It is has certainly led me to have some interest in the books of Coco Mellors, and I will look out for ‘Cleopatra and Frankenstein’ on my travels, because, of course, a bookworm never has enough books.