Book Review: Between Sisters

I needed something comforting and warm and engrossing to read, in the middle of a dark, cold winter. Cathy Kelly’s It Started With Paris was there, on my bookshelf, yet to be read. So I gobbled that up. And then I checked my Kindle and yes, I did have Between Sisters, so I read that. And after that I needed another fix so I purchased the new one, Secrets of a Happy Marriage, and I remembered that she is damn talented and also so, so good on female friendship.

There is an idea that people have – people who don’t read what used to be called ‘chick lit’ – that ‘women’s fiction’ is the same as ‘romance’. That it’s all these stories of girls desperate to find Mr Right, and therefore dangerous and unfeminist (when women write love stories, they are Silly; when men write love stories, they are Literature). But no. The focus is on the emotional, interior lives of women – and all the relationships in their lives.

It Started With Paris shows how the engagement of one couple impacts on the lives of those around them, from the future bride’s best friend, nursing a heartbreak, to their parents caught in their own relationship dramas. Secrets of a Happy Marriage does something similar, only this time it’s a seventieth birthday party that provokes the members of the Brannigan clan into action. (It also includes a glorious storyline set in the world of publishing, which pleased me immensely.)

But it’s Between Sisters that tugged on my heartstrings the most. Coco and Cassie have successful careers – Coco owns a vintage boutique, while her older sister Cassie works in event management – but dysfunctional personal lives. Coco’s fear of commitment means she hasn’t let anyone close to her since a betrayal from the love of her life four years ago; Cassie’s struggling with her husband’s obsessive devotion to his manipulative elderly mother.

Both were raised by their grandmother and a distant, sad father who died too young. Their mother’s abandonment still haunts them both, with Cassie’s ever-increasing dependency on ‘wine o’clock’ (a superb portrayal of alcohol abuse among working mothers) echoing her mother’s addiction issues. Neither Cassie – who has two teenage daughters of her own – or Coco – now taking care of her hospitalised best friend’s daughter – understand how she could have left them, without ever getting in touch.

Naturally, said mother is about to return – and some truths about the past will be revealed. Sympathetic characters and an optimism about humanity – even as there are some people who’ll just never learn – make this an engaging cosy-blanket of a read.