Review: The Sisters of Summit Avenue by Lynn Cullen

My thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for offering me this advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Everyone’s family has its share of drama. It is always fun to read about someone else’s family drama. The Sisters of Summit Avenue is no exception. This is a story about a complicated blended family in the early twentieth century when blended families were not spoken of in polite society.

Half-sisters June and Ruth cannot be more different, and this novel chronicles their relationship over several decades. Mixed with the family drama is the added bonus of some mystery along with some interesting historical tidbits. I had heard of the mysterious “sleeping sickness” (encephalitis lethargica) epidemic that affected nearly half a million people in the early to mid-1900’s. Reading about the disease as it affects the characters in this book was interesting and truly horrifying. Learning some of the characteristics of this disease made Ruth’s story even more dramatic. I also learned more about the history of Betty Crocker. I received a Betty Crocker Cookbook as a wedding gift about 40 years ago, but this is all I knew of the name or the company behind it. June’s job as one of many Bettys is a fun addition to the story.

It is sad to read about how a bad decision and a series of actions made by a selfish and thoughtless young person can sour the relationship between two sisters who love each other. But this is often times how relationships are wrecked. I wish I could tell you that this decision and the actions following are forgiven and that the sisters are able to mend their relationship and live “happily ever after,” but this story is just not that easy. I like the ending of this novel, but it is a lot of work getting there. Maybe this work makes the story more real and believable. The wrap-up is a bit hasty, but it is not meant to overshadow the story of the sister’s relationship. The Sisters of Summit Avenue has a satisfying conclusion.

My star rating: 3.5

When the book opens, we meet June. She’s a “Betty”. And not in the way they use it in Clueless, or maybe that’s exactly how they use it. But she actually works for the company that owned Betty Crocker, one of the many women who develop recipes and think of decorating and home ideas.
Its almost comical. Because you know then men at these companies could think of this stuff, but in that day and age, they had to bring in women to do the heavy lifting for them so they could have long martini lunches and crunch the numbers. You know, the important stuff. And this is an actual piece of American history. General Mills created Betty Crocker in 1921. If you want to read more about it, the article in Foodimentary lays it out well.
So once you’ve moved past that mind-blowing tidbit, it’s funny that June is seen as the perfect housewife and cook. But she is anything but because she doesn’t have any children and back then, it was a glaring discrepancy.
Then of course once we’ve met June, we meet her sister Ruth. Who is everything June isn’t. She isn’t posh and put together with a successful husband. She is a poor farmwife with 4 kids and a husband who is basically in a coma. And has been for 8 years.
And it keeps getting more and more interesting. Because there are family secrets and love triangles. These women are way more scandalous that you can imagine at the beginning of the book. It took me about a third of the book to really get into it, otherwise I would have given it a higher rating.
Still, it’s a great read. And anyone who grew up with a sister will identify with the sometimes complicated relationship that June and Ruth share. This one isn’t a summer read. It’s more of a curl up under a blanket with a warm cup of tea read. Perfect for fall! And it’s out September 10.
Special thanks to Netgalley and Gallery Books for an advanced egalley in exchange for my honest review.

I really loved Mrs. Poe, which was a historical thriller. I was very excited to read this novel. However, I had a hard time with this one. While the writing was excellent, I did not like the sibling rivalry and betrayal. It made the novel very redundant. I also did not like the ending, which made me a little disappointed with the book. Still, there were a few good things about this book. I especially like the setting and the story gives some information about Betty Cocker. I also like the redemption theme in the novel. Overall, it was a tough read, but it was worth it. The novel is about inner resilience and forgiveness. I recommend this for fans of Susan Meisner, Melanie Dobson, and Melissa Jones. Full review to come!

This is a story of sibling rivalry and family secrets. The characters are well developed, though I personally didn’t find them very likable. There was interesting information about Betty Crocker, and the sleeping sickness that affected to many. So, some good historical tie-ins. Well written, but the subject matter didn’t make for a happy reading experience.

This is a very sweet, very relatable story of two sisters and their mother. It was interesting how each of the character's perspectives differed and to see how much, in the end, they all grew as people. I enjoyed reading this book.

Lynne Cullen brings her gift for period fiction and rich characterization to the Midwest in the 1900s and two sisters. It takes a while for the story to build momentum, but once it does, it delivers a wonderful tale of sibling love and rivalry.

An engaging read...a little slow in learning the characters at first, but quickly picked up. I enjoy the excellent writings of Lynn Cullen. This is my first book of hers, but I plan on reading her other works (starting with my desktop copy of Mrs. Poe). Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to review this book!

4.5*s

Was given this book for free through Net Galley for an honest review.

It was nice to read a book that was not a romance, not a suspense, not a scifi or fantasy. I guess it falls into the genre of "women's fiction". Just a fiction book about a mom with a past and 2 adult sisters in early 1900's America.

The author is great with words! Her descriptions are so colorful. So different, in a good way. You can really understand/see what she is trying to explain.

I enjoyed how the story was told in both their present times and in flashback. Best part? This author listed the year and place for each jump in time so there was no question as to who/what/where.

The sisters were best friends as kids until one stole the other one's boyfriend. And this story shows the paths their lives took after that.

Check out this book on Goodreads: The Sisters of Summit Avenue

This was a good mystery that is part of a series . It was atmospheric and fast paced and will lead me to read other books by Luna.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me review this book

'Her whole life, June had quietly taken whatever knocks had come her way.'

Sisters and their rivalries, the imagined and real inequalities of a parent’s love and attention, how it bleeds out upon the world, infects the future. This is a novel about how we often make life choices based on the trauma of our past, and how sibling issues can alter the course of our lives. Ruth has always felt her life has been lived in the shadow of June’s radiant beauty. Everywhere she goes, people are under the spell of it. Luck seems to ooze from her very blessed pores. Of course the natural flow of her life has made her wildly successful, working as one of “the Betty’s” conjuring creative recipes in the famous Betty Crocker test kitchens that other wives, mothers are dying to emulate. Ruth? Ruth is trapped running her family’s farm in Indiana, while her beloved husband is trapped in his body, with the mysterious ailment “the sleeping sickness”. Encephalitis lethargica was a widespread, mysterious, bizarre ailment that left a devastating number of people dead or institutionalized as they were left in a sleep like state. (Some of you may recall the movie Awakenings starring the late, great Robin Williams and Robert Deniro whose character’s symptoms present much the same as John, based on Oliver Sacks non-fiction book about patients who contacted encephalitis lethargica). This is a serious disease not even fully understood today. It is grave indeed, and Ruth is conflicted between resentment and pity.

Ruth must deal with this devastating illness that has stolen her strong husband, leaving in his stead a mostly unconscious (or is he aware still of his surroundings) man. It is on her to raise their girls, varying in ages, to keep their farm going, no mean feat! Her mother is by her side, mostly tending to John while Ruth handles the backbreaking work, becoming more and more bitter with the passing of each day. Why must she always be the one that awful things always seems to befall? Every time she has a chance at happiness, things sour and it’s made all the worse having to witness her sister always rising like cream above the drudgery of life. If God has favorites, certainly it is June, always June and never Ruth. Why, even her own husband, before the illness still longed for the golden beauty! She just knows it. It must be hard to feel like you were made up of leftovers, as if your sibling is meant for great things because of their beauty while you have to fight for every crumb of affection you can rake out of this hungry world. But things are never what they seem.

June’s always garnered attention, unwanted as much as welcome, and while many things in life appear to come easy for her, it is the very things she desires most, the very ones that give life meaning that elude her. She has never understood the bitter heart that beats in her sister Ruth’s chest, why she seems to always want what she has, why she has laid claim to the one man she loved so much. But all of that is in the past, right now she has a career, one that serves as a creative outlet and makes her very popular and while her marriage to Richard, a successful, wealthy doctor seems enviable, there lurks shame within their marriage, things that she has been told she cannot provide for him, things a woman should be able to do. How she would love children, like Ruth has.

Maybe this visit to Ruth and John’s will be a bridge reconnecting the sisters, even if she is conflicted about seeing John in his frozen state. Her heart still has wounds, there was never closure. She would never betray Ruth, she feels pity for her, for everything Ruth must bear on her shoulders, but the past is still a fresh ache. If only she had someone to confide her own sorrows in.

Everyone seems to be harboring secrets and heaping piles of guilt, Ruth with her hired help, June and Richard with what they tell each other and hide, longings that have stewed in John’s sleeping heart, and their mother Dorothy. Dorothy whose own dark past as daughter of the hired help in a wealthy home is the seed to the ruinous relationship between her girls. John’s bizarre illness and the way disabled children, adults were treated ‘back in the day’ give the novel a bit of heft and keeps it from being just another tale about sibling dynamics. Too, the mention of hard times, people at the end of their rope trying to survive and giving up. Ruth is bitter, but not everyone can be an upbeat, gracious Pollyanna when they have spent their life feeling inferior. Maybe their mother is a bit guilty of the imbalance in the sister’s relationship, and maybe her reasons make sense, but you know what people fail to realize, perception is what drives us. We are often shaped by the reactions of our first society, our own parents, and it’s there in the looks Ruth gets from her own, especially when she is John’s chosen. Ruth is hard to take, she is so used to losing that it’s hard for her to see that she has so much love. Her children adore her, and even June still loves her. But her fault has always been in romance, you cannot force the hand of love, and you cannot make people want you more by trying to muddy or take from another. Not the right people anyway.

It is a lesson in self-sabotage and maybe even pride, because as awful as everyone will likely feel Ruth is, June sure as hell doesn’t fight much for what she wants either. The ending threw me, when the past comes knocking at the door, it happened too fast. I think I was expecting more of a fight when a certain character wants to stake his claim in the family, so to speak. It’s never that simple. I expected a meatier ending, but it’s a good read all the same, even if all the characters wore my patience! Half the time you want to say, grow up, speak up, just stop this nonsense. My god but we get in our own way, don’t we?

Publication Date: September 10, 2019

Gallery, Pocket Books

Two sisters who love the same man....both raised by the same mother but raised completely different from each other. This story is full of family drama and the struggles they have to overcome in their life.
What I found interesting: 1) The reference to Betty Crocker 2) learning about the sleeping sickness disease 3) eye opener about the best way to raise your child.
Thank you to NetGallery, the publisher and author, Lynn Cullen, for the opportunity to read and give my honest review of “The Sisters of Summit Avenue.”

Thank you for the opportunity to read this novel. This book is the epitome of a dysfunctional family, too the point where it became a bit ridiculous. Although time periods were listed for each chapter I was expecting a more historical fiction read,

Short, quick, alternating POV chapters, sometimes changing POV within chapter.  The voices were hard for me differentiate.  This book could have been significantly shorter, as there was unnecessary duplication of scenes from different POV, but no new information and again, difficult to "hear" the difference in voice.

This is primarily a tale of two sisters, sisters who have faced immense pain, joy, jealousy, trauma- together. They do the normal sisterly thing of being rivals, loving the same boy, etc, but at the end of the day, when it counts most, they're there for each other. I understand what other reviewers said about the jumpiness of the timeline, but overall I was able to understand where we were at each part of the story. This may have been a historical fiction, but it very well could have been the story of any of the families overwhelmed by the trauma of what was called "the sleeping sickness"- encephalitis lethargica. Reading about the lives and generational of Dorothy, June, and Ruth had me wrapped up and transported to a different time.

I received this as a free galley from NetGalley in exchange for an honest and fair review.

The description of the book tells the basic background of the situation. This is an intertwined tale of two sisters, very different in personality, and their mother. It bounces around in time from 1922 to 1934 with a few other stops, just read the date at the beginning of each chapter. Each chapter is about each of the women and many times it's the same situation just seen through the others eyes. I found it interesting and made me keep reading to find out how it works out. The Great Depression is a character all on its own as affects each of their lives, the living conditions and travel. The child expert that Dorothy followed was real and I hate to think how many children his "expert" advice messed up, as was the sleeping sickness that no answer has ever been revealed why it happened. I liked the ending and the resolutions of each character. Thanks to NetGalley and Ms Cullen for the chance to read an ARC of this book.

Lynn Cullen’s The Sisters of Summit Avenue is a story for those who like suspense-filled historical novels. Set in the 1920s and ‘30s, Dorothy is the daughter of a butler and housekeeper for the Lambs, a well-to-do family, not unlike the Granthams of Downton Abbey. She has two daughters, June and Ruth. They fiercely love one another, but the youngest, Ruth, sees June as her rival all the same. A great divide occurs between the sisters. This is a book that has a main mystery and a secondary mystery to solve for the reader. Cullen moves back and forth through the Roaring ‘20s into the Great Depression, ending in 1950. The editor called this a “heartfelt tribute to mothers, daughters, and sisters everywhere.”

What worked for me:
1. The author-reader contract truly started for me when I read Dorothy’s harrowing tale about escaping with her baby. She told her tale to Ruth’s husband, John, we learn later. He was speechless and motionless from contracting encephalitis lethargic, the sleeping sickness. I was drawn in by the heart-pounding start as she slipped away from somewhere sinister with the baby. She was met by William Dowdy in the rain that day and I was worried for her, not knowing if she would be caught.
2. The theatre of my mind also was triggered as a read about the 1920s and ‘30s, the time when my grandparents were growing up. I had read the F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and thought the author was tipping her hat to those two authors. I started a Pinterest board about ideas found while reading. I researched Black Blizzards; Encephalitis Lethargica (Think of the movie with Robin Williams: “Awakenings”); Bes-Ben hats; flapper hairstyles; the Great Depression; Betty Crocker; and state schools for “feeble-minded children.”
3. Having a sister, I could relate to the bond they shared that held despite the fallen state of their personal lives. Since they were children Ruth had seen her relationship to her sister as one of competition. But both sisters were protective of each other in their own ways. They knew their mother was “odd.” They just didn’t know her life of sacrifice. They didn't have the knowledge about her cruel beginnings to explain why she was so secretive and lived like a hermit.
4. I was on the hook to find out what Ruth had done to damage the relationship between her sister and her. I cared about these characters. I wanted to know what happened before both sisters were married, before Ruth became a mother and June became “Betty Crocker.” How did June meet Richard Whiteleather? All was revealed with a bittersweet/satisfying conclusion.

Problem areas for me:
1. I was unclear what the emergency was that brought June to Ruth and John’s farm in Indiana-Michigan. Ruth’s animosity toward her sister was evident. Was it John’s illness? No. He’d been ill 8 years so far without June showing up at the farm. Did their father recently die? No. I had to go back to the beginning. Dorothy told June that Ruth wanted her there. She arranged the meeting, according to Richard who traveled with June. I think it would have been better to say Richard had some treatments in mind for John's sleeping sickness. I did expect Dorothy to tell her story to the sisters.
2. I took note of the times I felt like I was losing interest, bogged down in the time period, its people and scenes. In Part One, I wrote: “Some sentences have too much filler between subject and verb. Too much detail about June’s job with Betty Crocker and the ladies identified by first name, hometown.” While I did enjoy learning about the beginnings of Betty Crocker and what Minneapolis was like in the 1930s, I felt too much detail intruded on the storyline. I flipped forward to see where I was going next. 
3. I like more of a linear approach if I’m to travel back in flashbacks. I needed to hear the whole story behind Ruth and June’s falling out, which I think started in Part 3. The story of June and Ruth in the 1920s began when June and Richard arrived at the farm. That was the trigger. When June is at the door to where John lies, Ruth flashed back to when she met John, then June’s beau.   I think the story of the sisters and their beaus would have been easier to follow had it taken a step-by-step progression before returning to present-day 1934 (without any sooner returns to 1934 in our time-travelin’ Roadster!) Now, I did think of Stewart, the time-traveler of “Kate and Leopold.” He said time is a pretzel – “a beautiful 4D pretzel of kismetic inevitability.” 

Thank you to Lynn Cullen and Simon and Schuster for this uncorrected proof to read and review. Not to give away too much, but I was satisfied with the ending. When one of the mysterious men riding around the farm was revealed, I had all sorts of ideas about how that would play out and wasn’t disappointed.

This was a very interesting book. The sisters were very different as they grew up and had very different lives as adults.
The character development was really good. You got to know each sister very well.
I did enjoy the book.

This is a story of an angry younger sister who wants everything her older sister has. It is a compelling story, and completely believable.

It is a terrific book… but unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the ending.

I received this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion. My thanks to the author, her publisher and NetGalley

Living on Summit Avenue is the place to be. Richard his wife June, June's sister Ruth and her four daughters and their mother, Dorothy live here.
They didn't start here in the upper echelon of society. No Dorothy and her daughters had much humbler beginnings. The stories behind these string women make them who there are today. The misunderstandings and secrets forgiven and revealed make them better people. Recognizing the good in each other makes their love stronger.
A heartwarming story of siblings that will bring tears to your eyes.

This book is about two sisters and their mom who have each had a lot of hardships in their lives. Each woman has struggled in some way. I felt like some of the ending was too rushed. The book had a slow and steady pace and then piled a lot of history all at the end. I think it was meant to be a shocker, but it was a lot to take in all at once