Member Reviews
I really tired, you know when you try to finish a book and you get sidetracked by life? I read too many books and now I am very picky. Thanks for the ARC.
Green calls this book "the first book in a while that has felt like I am back to myself," and it shows in the lusciousness, love, and sensory details. B-list actress Ronnie has had a tough relationship with her three daughters, but when she summons them to her home in Westport, Connecticut, each of them discovers both their own flaws and new opportunities to heal and grow. Green's best book in years. Highly recommended.
A perfect read for a lazy Sunday. This is the story about the complicated relationships of mothers and daughters and sisters with a less than ideal family dynamic. The estranged sisters are called home by their relatively young, difficult, and normally larger than life, actress mother to be told that their mother is sick with a terminal illness. It is an opportunity to heal and learn to care for each other in their adult lives. An endearing and touching story.
Ronni Sunshine left her home in London to pursue a Hollywood dream. Her daughter Nell went her own way to work on a farm, Meredith always struggled with the fact that she never felt thin or pretty enough for others, and Lizzie embarked on a successful career as a chef. The sisters and their mother all went their separate ways, but now they've come together again, following Ronni's news that she has a terminal illness. The three sisters put their problems aside to help their mother through this difficult time, and learn a few things along the way.
The Sunshine Sisters by Jane Green follows the lives of three sisters as they come together at their mother's house. Their mother has requested their attendance so that she can inform them of her recent health diagnosis. The sisters have been estranged with each other and their mother but this might be coming to an impasse as they reel from the shocking news that their mother relays to them. This trial will help the sisters see that sometimes blood actually can be thicker than water. Read and enjoy!
This is certainly the best book that Jane Green has written in years, a book that I totally enjoyed. Within the framework of three sisters getting reacquainted and ending their estrangement, she has captured many topical and interesting scenarios.
The sisters are the children of diva, celebrity and difficult mother Ronni Sunshine. We enter their lives as she is planning suicide rather than live through the ravages of dying of ALS. Despite the fact that the daughters are very different, it is their reunion at her bedside that salves years of wounds and gives each of the women a happy ending and a road pointed toward a fine future.
I really enjoyed this book and suggest you tuck it in your beach bag for a fun and entertaining summer read.
I am a Jane Green fan. I was happy to receive an ARC of her new book.
A mother asks 3 daughters to come home to help her end her life.
They had a poor family background. They shared a turbulent lives as young girls each developing her own coping skills; but none having a healthy notion of what family means.
Until a disease changes everything!
Can they find each other again and become a family now or has too much hurt been done?
True enjoyment wrapped up into a book.
Jane Green never disappoints and this book was no exception! You will be hard pressed to not recognize yourself in one of the sisters, z or like me in the mother., not in the disinterested or always away but in how I think my children see me and how I think they feel I liked one better than another. Of course that isn't true but I think everyone with a sibling feels that one was loved more than another.
Ronni Sunshine left London for Hollywood to become a beautiful, charismatic star of the silver screen. But at home, she was a narcissistic, disinterested mother who alienated her three daughters.
As soon as possible, tomboy Nell fled her mother's overbearing presence to work on a farm and find her own way in the world as a single mother. The target of her mother s criticism, Meredith never felt good enough, thin enough, pretty enough. Her life took her to London and into the arms of a man whom she may not even love. And Lizzy, the youngest, more like Ronni than any of them, seemed to have it easy, using her drive and ambition to build a culinary career to rival her mother's fame, while her marriage crumbled around her.
But now the Sunshine Girls are together again, called home by Ronni, who has learned that she has a serious disease and needs her daughters to fulfill her final wishes. And though Nell, Meredith, and Lizzy are all going through crises of their own, their mother s illness draws them together to confront old jealousies and secret fears and they discover that blood might be thicker than water after all. You won't be disappointed in this book!
I really love Jane Green, but was disappointed in this book. I did enjoy the second half of the book, when the three sisters came back together. Meredith, Nell, and Lizzy were funny and heartwarming with each other, although I could not really empathize with their characters. They were narrow minded and selfish. I felt the actual death of Ronnie was glossed over. Yes, it was in the prologue how Ronnie took her own life, but the actual chapter where the girls found her was unsatisfying. All in all, I just could not connect with these characters.
Jane Green is a favorite author of mine, but this book wasn't. The way the book was written was too choppy, jumping off many years later and picking up the characters lives. The style made it hard to really care about the characters. Also, I don't know what the author was trying to prove, but this book tried too hard to include so many stigmas: extramarital affairs, same-sex relationships, and assisted suicide. Just not for me.
Ronni Sunshine may have been a big Hollywood star, but she was a crappy mother. Only interested in herself, she alternately ignored or verbally abused her three daughters. Nell left home to be a single mom on a farm, Lizzy built a culinary empire but lost sight of her marriage in the interim, and Meredith, who was never pretty or slim enough to suit her mother ran off to London to be with a man she’s not sure she really loves. Now, all the sisters are called home by their mother. Ronni is dying and wants her children to fulfill her final wishes. Never close as children, the three sisters return to their mother’s side out of a sense of duty. Will their close proximity be enough to let the fractured family find some measure of peace?