When their mother is diagnosed with cancer, Bianca and Cordelia find themselves returning home to join their third sister, Rose, who still lives in their hometown. Bean and Cordy aren't returning to support their mother as much as they are impelled by their own messy life situations: Bianca because she has been fired for stealing from her job, and Cordelia because after years of living irresponsibly on the road, she has discovered that she is pregnant. Stalwart Rose has finally glimpsed a chance More...

I read about 50 pages of this. I found the unknown narrator irritating-at first I thought I might have missed who was doing the narrating and kept going back to see, but then I realized the book was supposed to be like that, that there was no one narrator; I may be old-fashioned but I like knowing who's doing the narrating in a book. I suppose this can be considered an antinovel since I haven't seen this kind of narration before. I just can't stand it. And, while Shakespeare was a brilliant writ More...

A feel-good book, something that will burn your heart with affection to the characters, and at the end will warm your heart with its story.

The story is simple - three sisters who were reunited in their home town to aid their ailing mother. There's nothing fancy about the plot, except when you started to read it. What I love about the book is how expected each moment can be, yet there is a dash of twist in each way the story was told. Each sisters has their own story, which they tried to ran away More...

Is every book set in Ohio?

This is the second book in a row that I have read set here in Ohio. The first one,Knockemstiff, was most excellent; Weird Sisters I’m sorry to say was shit. This book was just, beyond words, sucky. Gack! I even finished it because I wasn’t going to let it beat me.

Here’s the clever premise. Three sisters by the names of Bianca, Cordelia , and Rose (short for Roselyn? I just don’t care) are born to a family who can’t stop reading…..ever. They are born to parents whose nam More...

Absolutely pitch perfect. (I would give this ten out of five stars if I could.)

This is the first book I have read that uses a first-person-plural narrative style, and it was so completely appropriate; you get the sense that this book came together with these three sisters sitting around a Pensieve after the events of this book have transpired, looking at them playing out again, and dictating the story to the author, who has set up shop with a typewriter in the adjacent corner of the room.

Speakin More...

My TBR pile has grown ridiculously huge of late (my house is hoarding half my public library's precious cargo). Despite this ever-increasing mountain of unread promises, my reading pace has proportionately slowed. At a time when I should be blazing through the pages of every book I pick up, I find myself smelling the proverbial roses. The faster I burn through a book, the more quickly I am to forget it anyway, even the real gems. Plus, life just gets in the way sometimes and it's been doing a da More...

I was struck by a few sentences spoken by the character of Father Aidan on page 305 of my copy of this book: "There are times in our lives when we have to realize our past is precisely what it is, and we cannot change it. But we can change the story we tell ourselves about it, and by doing that, we can change the future."

I liked the book and the interactions between the sisters/the sisters and their parents/the sisters and non-family members. It did seem as if some of the character traits or sce More...

I can't even finish this piece of crap book; it's so juvenile it's insulting. Clearly Eleanor Brown just took some extended writing class and thinks she's an author because she's using every cliche and plot technique to prolong a story that's just not interesting. Here are the reasons I know she's an amateur writer: 1) She includes insignificant details that are supposed to make her characters round but really have nothing at all to do with the characters - why is it important to talk about some More...

Another unexpected read that I opened by chance and it hooked me, this tale of the three sisters from a reasonably normal small college town family who take quite different life paths only to reunite when thei mother's illness and some major happenings in their life (pregnancy, marriage but also messed up career and heartbreak) brings them back to their home.

A fast and engaging read with well drawn characters

This book is nothing like the kind of thing I choose to read. It is the kind of thing found in the "New fiction" section at Barnes and Noble, or "Literature" in other places. I'm a genre fiction sort of girl, and so this isn't something I'd have ever read under normal conditions.

But, when the Vice President comes flying down the hall to give you her copy because she's sure you'd enjoy it...well.... And to be fair, we did talk about it when we were doing the Walk for the Cure in October, and our More...

To begin: I admit, I only read this book because it was voted as the April book in the book club that I started. 'The Weird Sisters' sounds like a silly title to me, honestly, but, after reading it, I find that is the only silly part about it (and it does have significant meaning in terms of the story).

I enjoyed reading this book more than I thought I would. It starts with a set up of three sisters, Rosiland, Bianca, and Cordelia, who are named after characters in Shakespeare plays (their father More...

Esta novela prometía. Empieza con una frase que me intrigó y que parecía presagiar algo bueno: "We came home because we were failures". El libro está muy bien escrito, es ameno, está lleno de frases e ideas para enmarcar y se lee en un santiamén. Pero me faltó algo. Me quedé con una sensación rara, de no saber del todo por qué me estaban contando esa historia en concreto y no otra. Y me pareció un poquito banal y un tanto girly. No girly del palo Marian Keyes, sino un girly sofisticado; pero gir More...

So far I'm just glad I like my sisters more than these sisters like each other. A bunch of self-absorbed females is what I'm getting up to now.

UPDATE: This was an audiobook for me or I would not have read it as my sister abandoned it and I trust her when it comes to readability. However I had already borrowed it from the library and went ahead. It did improve and I did warm up to the characters some, but there were definitely some irksome contrivances, foremost the speaking in Shakespearean snip More...

This novel left me with a very good feeling of completion as Eleanor Brown chronicled the lives of 3 sisters whose lives diverge dramatically after high school. Their mother's health draws them back to their childhood town, where they finally face their futures. I found a connection with the book-reading Andreas family, for I myself always carry a book with me. I enjoyed the author's dead-on Shakespearean quotes woven into the communications between the sisters and their parents.

This book started out great! I loved the quoting Shakespeare and the story itself told by all three sisters. After a while I found the writing annoying. It wasn't always easy to understand what Brown was trying to say. I persevered and by the middle I just wanted to know what happened. I was relieved when I finally finished! I felt that this was basically a very juvenile story and I most certainly would not recommend it to anyone. By the way, this is the first time I am taking the time to review More...

I just saw another friend rate this book, and couldn't remember what I rated it. And found out I DIDN'T rate it. What the heck?

I read the synopsis, but just couldn't get past the same thing my gr friend couldn't: It wasn't a paranormal book, and with that title, I kept looking for the magic. I *knew* it wasn't a paranormal book, but still...felt mislead. Go figure.

The story was okay...but my biggest problem was with the point of view. We have three sisters...we're TOLD there are three sisters. More...

I had zero expectations when I picked up this book to read. We were simply at the beach and someone had left it on the shelf. Common practice there, leave a book for someone else to pick up and enjoy. Many of the books that get left in the house are trashy romance novels (and yes, i do know who leaves them, but that is a story for another day) but there are also really good books too! Like this one...

I had recently listened to Alan Cummings' stellar performance of Macbeth

http://www.amazon.com/Ma More...

More...

I think I enjoyed this book. I read it on the strength of a quote I found on Pinterest

“She remembered one of her boyfriends asking, offhandedly, how many books she read in a year. "A few hundred," she said.
"How do you have the time?" he asked, gobsmacked.
She narrowed her eyes and considered the array of potential answers in front of her. Because I don't spend hours flipping through cable complaining there's nothing on? Because my entire Sunday is not eaten up with pre-game, in-game, and post-ga More...

This excellent book uses an interesting narrative voice choice to make a statement about birth order, identity and sisterhood.
There are three adult sisters who come back to their childhood home obstensibly because of their mother's breast cancer diagnosis, but each has selfish reasons for coming back to a small college town that two of them once fled.
Much is made of their birth order and the differences that manifest in each sister as a result. There is a lot of sniping and criticism; they have More...

The plot isn't particularly original; three very different sisters at different ends of the USA come back to their family home to sort out their problems. The characters also aren’t anything special; Rosalind is the sensible/boring one, Bianca is the sexy/slutty one and Cordelia is the baby of the family.

Don’t be put off too quickly though! The Weird Sisters does have a lot going for it. To start with, the references to Shakespeare are a nice touch. The sisters are constantly quoting him – a hab More...

I gave this book 4 stars, despite that it is occasionally annoyingly pedestrian, occasionally overwritten, and occasionally contrived. That said, it is highly engaging, at times insightful, and intriguing in its many quotes from Shakespeare in service of the story. The weird sisters aren't that, but rather wyrd sisters, "wyrd" meaning fate to Shakespeare. Fate, Shakespeare, and the effect of sibling order (oldest, middle, youngest) are major themes in the story. Rosalind (Rose), Bianca (Bean), a More...

I really wanted to like this book. Really! What could go wrong with a story about three sisters, daughters of a Shakespeare professor, named Cordelia (Cordy), Rose (for Rosalind), and Bianca. Well, turns out plenty can go wrong. First is the off-putting third person plural narrator. What?? Do these sisters need to speak as one? Are they the ubiquitous royal "we"? That alone was enough to grate on my nerves, but it turns out that not one of the sisters is worth getting to know in depth so perhaps More...

I was so excited when I found Eleanor Brown's debut novel, The Weird Sisters. The premise? Three sisters come home to care for their ailing mother, and being together as a family helps each woman confront her problems and find peace. The only things these sisters share in common are a love of books and an encyclopedic knowledge of Shakespeare's works. Since I'm the oldest of three sisters, a former English Lit major, and a librarian, this book looked perfect.

It's not perfect.

Perhaps I demand t More...

The only reason I read this book was because it was the monthly selection of our book club. I would not recommend it to others although it turned out to be not as bad as I thought from reading the first half of the book.

The 3 sisters were trite & stereotypical & for most of the book, I had the urge to smack them upside the head.

The first person, plural narrative voice was a massive fail. On the author's website in the FAQ for this book, she talks about finding that very few authors have More...

So the book is well written as in the craft is tight, but this story is so overdone. There is absolutely not one bit that you haven't read or seen before. The sisters are as typecast as you can get. I've always been one to say that cliches aren't bad. Afterall, they become cliches for a reason, but I have to ask what is the point of writing such a story? If you have nothing new to add, then you're just spitting out previously chewed food and that's pretty gross. The plot has been done, the chara More...

I snatched this book off the shelf immediately because of the title and the striking book cover. Both drew me in and I was not sure if I even needed to read the back jacket.
To be fair, I think you should know I am the youngest of five sisters. Yes, that’s right, five. Let the sympathy for our father begin. I was curious to see if author Eleanor Brown could capture that interesting, odd and unusual relationship between sisters. Would she unlock the childhood dynamics of growing up in small town A More...

This wasn't a shockingly amazing book. It was entertaining, for the most part. The thing is, I'm fifteen years old and I'm reading a book about women their thirties. My dad found it at an airport and thought I might like it. I read it because I liked the descriptions of their clothes and the childhood flashbacks, and I liked how each sister has her own individual character. I didn't actually care what happened to them, but like I said, it was entertaining. This is probably selfish of me to say, More...