bibliophile [the weird sisters]

Especially if you have sisters, or any sibling dynamic, you'll enjoy this.

The Weird Sisters, by Eleanor Brown

My dear friend K (who happens to be the eldest of three sisters) recommended this book to me last year, but it took me awhile to get around to it. I thought it was a good read, a solid 6/7 out of 10, especially for Brown's first book. Here's the blurb:

Three sisters have returned to their childhood home, reuniting the eccentric Andreas family. Here, books are a passion (there is no problem a library card can't solve) and TV is something other people watch. Their father-a professor of Shakespeare who speaks almost exclusively in verse-named them after the Bard's heroines. It's a lot to live up to.

The sisters have a hard time communicating with their parents and their lovers, but especially with one another. What can the shy homebody eldest sister, the fast-living middle child, and the bohemian youngest sibling have in common? Only that none has found life to be what was expected; and now, faced with their parents' frailty and their own personal disappointments, not even a book can solve what ails them...

So, that's a bit dramatic up there. Really it's just family and personal drama, like any good novel. The three sisters "love each other, but don't like each other very much", which sets us up for some nice disagreements. It's always tough for me when there isn't a particular character to love singularly, and this book is very evenly divided among the three- you feel for them all equally, and they all get comparable time dedicated to their story. They're very realistic, but I do wish we'd gotten to go deeper in the character development. Some very unique narration here, but I won't spoil it for you. Check it out!