The Sister Act

by Blossom Elfman

To achieve independence from a domineering mother and to become women on their own terms, intellectual eighteen-year-old Molly tries to turn romantic fantasy into reality and her sixteen-year-old sister, Shera, meets Brian and becomes pregnant.

Genres: Young Adult, Fiction

151 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 1, 1978

About the author

Clare "Blossom" Elfman was an American novelist and senior literary editor of Buzzine. She was the mother of director and publisher Richard Elfman and musician and composer Danny Elfman, Her novel The Girls of Huntington House was produced as a film and received an Emmy as a television movie.

Reviews

[Stephanie A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty writing, though at times it felt like a full blown jungle of literary quotes and references I had to push my way through in order to follow the plot. I thought it evoked the late 70s period well, between a sophomore thinking that the best way to escape her struggles in school is to get pregnant and married, and a nearly-graduated senior moving in with her boyfriend and dreaming of running off for an adventure abroad, where she can write and he can paint, rather than follow his methodical plan of becoming a math teacher.

The mother was super overbearing in her desperation for her daughters to succeed academically and have a better life than she did as a single mother. Her micromanaging made it easy to see why the younger sister (who already seemed younger than her years, almost childlike) was so helpless and dependent on her care, while it was also interesting to see the elder sister rebel from that, yet remain torn between her fantasies and her inability to realize them because she's so busy trying to fix her sister's messes.

[Tatumn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The characters were interesting and as the book progressed I found myself wondering what would happen next, but ultimately the ending was a rip-off and nothing really happened.

[Angela Woodrow Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved this book. It hit different as an adult than it did when I was a teen.