Sisterhood Everlasting
Jun. 19th, 2011 08:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
author_by_nightThis book demonstrates why there shouldn't be adult versions of teen stories unless the writer is very, very careful.
I'm not going to spoil anyone, although I'd love to vent properly so please feel free to comment (just put SPOILERS as your comment subject), but basically it's a sequel to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. All four girls are twenty nine. Of course there's still minor spoilers here, but I'm trying to be careful.
Part of the problem is that while we know they're adults, I didn't really feel it. It wasn't even that they still seemed nineteen years old (their age in the last book) - they just didn't seem like adults either. They have all the mechanics of being adult, but nothing told me "wow, it really has been ten years." It should have been like reuniting with your friends from high school - it was more like reading your old high school friend's Facebook posts. You know your friend's obviously older now, your age, but you don't really see them doing anything other than marrying and holding fairly good jobs that demonstrates it.
Also, in the book something very horrible happens, and I took issue with how it was handled. I couldn't see any rhyme or reason for it - it honestly felt like she just wanted something very bad to happen because it was about adults, so it was supposed to be edgier. You can have edgier, though, without a plotline that's so dark and off kilter. They suspect someone has done something, yet there is absolutely no reason to believe the character would do such a thing based on the other books.
We also find things out about a character I don't believe for a moment they wouldn't have found out. They encounter that character's family, and Ann Brashares really expects me to believe they wouldn't mention Twist? Unless the character didn't even tell her family, but I find that hard to believe without backstory. We're not really told why the character hid such a big thing from everyone she cared about.
Ann Brashares wrote another book for adults, and incidentally I had the same issues. I just feel like she believes to write about adults she has to be gloomy and dark, which she could accomplish if she didn't do it in so many cliche ways. The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood is as dark as it gets, yet it works because I don't feel as though Rebecca Wells is shoving down every sad cliche down my throat. She's brutally honest about how messed up people can be, and that's what makes the book bearable - and there's actually stuff that's far more upsetting.
If you absolutely loved the Sisterhood series, proceed with caution when reading this.
I'm not going to spoil anyone, although I'd love to vent properly so please feel free to comment (just put SPOILERS as your comment subject), but basically it's a sequel to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. All four girls are twenty nine. Of course there's still minor spoilers here, but I'm trying to be careful.
Part of the problem is that while we know they're adults, I didn't really feel it. It wasn't even that they still seemed nineteen years old (their age in the last book) - they just didn't seem like adults either. They have all the mechanics of being adult, but nothing told me "wow, it really has been ten years." It should have been like reuniting with your friends from high school - it was more like reading your old high school friend's Facebook posts. You know your friend's obviously older now, your age, but you don't really see them doing anything other than marrying and holding fairly good jobs that demonstrates it.
Also, in the book something very horrible happens, and I took issue with how it was handled. I couldn't see any rhyme or reason for it - it honestly felt like she just wanted something very bad to happen because it was about adults, so it was supposed to be edgier. You can have edgier, though, without a plotline that's so dark and off kilter. They suspect someone has done something, yet there is absolutely no reason to believe the character would do such a thing based on the other books.
We also find things out about a character I don't believe for a moment they wouldn't have found out. They encounter that character's family, and Ann Brashares really expects me to believe they wouldn't mention Twist? Unless the character didn't even tell her family, but I find that hard to believe without backstory. We're not really told why the character hid such a big thing from everyone she cared about.
Ann Brashares wrote another book for adults, and incidentally I had the same issues. I just feel like she believes to write about adults she has to be gloomy and dark, which she could accomplish if she didn't do it in so many cliche ways. The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood is as dark as it gets, yet it works because I don't feel as though Rebecca Wells is shoving down every sad cliche down my throat. She's brutally honest about how messed up people can be, and that's what makes the book bearable - and there's actually stuff that's far more upsetting.
If you absolutely loved the Sisterhood series, proceed with caution when reading this.
