Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares

Title: Sisterhood Everlasting
Author: Ann Brashares
Genre: Chick-lit
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 382
Date read: June, 2011

Tibby, Lena, Carmen, and Bridget have grown up, starting their lives on their own. And though the jeans they shared are long gone, the sisterhood is everlasting.

Despite having jobs and men that they love, each knows that something is missing: the closeness that once sustained them. Carmen is a successful actress in New York, engaged to be married, but misses her friends. Lena finds solace in her art, teaching in Rhode Island, but still thinks of Kostos and the road she didn't take. Bridget lives with her longtime boyfriend, Eric, in San Francisco, and though a part of her wants to settle down, a bigger part can't seem to shed her old restlessness.

Then Tibby reaches out to bridge the distance, sending the others plane tickets for a reunion that they all breathlessly await. And indeed, it will change their lives forever - but in ways that none of them could ever have expected.

It feels wrong to give this an average rating, because it is anything but an average book. However, the rating indicates mostly how well I liked it, and to be honest, at times I didn't like it much (although at other times I loved it, so there you go...) I read the book in a single day - not because I particularly wanted to, but because I HAD to. I'd gotten so attached to the characters that it was the only way to get it out of my system and remember they were fictional - not real.

Explaining exactly why I had such an emotional reaction to this book would bring on spoilers, so I shall have to stick to generalities. It was at times desperately sad and I sobbed my way through much of it (to my husband's bemusement), but though occasionally depressing, it had just enough hope to keep me turning pages. Even more importantly, it satisfactorily answered my most pressing questions - anything less, and it would have ended up being thrown across the room in disgust.

Thankfully Ann Brashares didn't go there, and now I have left to figure out what I actually think of it, once the immediate emotional response has worn off.