I have enjoyed many of the author’s books over the past few years, especially those that explore food-themed storylines. Unfortunately, her latest offerings have been hit-or-miss for me. “This Place of Wonder” was a thoroughly enjoyable read, while “Write My Name Across the Sky” was a disappointment. “The Starfish Sisters” falls into the latter category.

Phoebe and Suze met in childhood, and while they lived in different cities, developed an enduring friendship into adulthood. Each in her own way was an outcast with their peer groups providing a bond that cemented their connection. Phoebe’s grandmother’s home became the common ground for their adventures, but also sowed the seeds of unspoken conflict between the two.

The storyline is told by alternating between Phoebe’s and Suze’s perspectives as well as shifting back and forth between the past and the current time. This style, coupled with a slow pace, made this a challenging read to embrace.

I liked how the book title related to both the “haystack” rock formations on the Oregon coast as well as the relationship between Phoebe and Suze, which was complex in nature. Both kept secrets from each other, but Suze’s motivation was out of compassion for Phoebe’s feelings. Phoebe, on the other hand, withheld hers through jealousy and spite with far more serious ramifications. In fact, Phoebe may have been a nurturing grandmother, but she was, what today would be termed, a toxic friend.

Overall, this novel explores the significant social issues of teen pregnancy, child abuse, and domestic violence, revealing the resiliency of the human spirit to survive and even thrive following such trauma. The author always excels at revealing the complexities of relationships and in this regard the book is a success. However, overall, it was a slow read that left me wanting a more streamlined storyline with fewer subplots that lacked depth.

My thanks to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the privilege of reviewing this book. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

This review is being posted immediately to my GoodReads and Amazon accounts.

Phoebe and Suze use to be sisters. Over the years, secrets had them drift apart. A violent act against Suze had her returning to their small coastal town in Oregon. Can their friendship, sisterhood go back to the earlier times? A great story about women, family, and friendships. As always Barbara O'Neal writes an emotional story that most can relate to.

Phoebe and Suze met decades ago when they were twelve years old.
This is the story of their friendship and its ups and downs.
Both women have had problems in their lives and this has affected their relationship.
A slow moving, duel timeline story about two very different characters.
Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

3.75⭐️

<i> Phoebe and Suze used to be closer than sisters. Growing up in a quiet and wildly beautiful coastal town in Oregon, they shared everything. Until the secrets they couldn’t share threatened their bond and complicated their lives.

Now, decades later, Suze, a famous actress desperate for safe haven following a brutal attack, is back in town. Phoebe, a successful illustrator and fabric designer, has discovered keeping a secret means she can’t let anyone get close, aside from her beloved granddaughter, Jasmine. As Jasmine’s move to London looms, Phoebe doesn’t know how to face the return of her old friend and all the drama she brings.

But Phoebe let Suze down once before and she’s not sure she can do it again. Can the two women who’ve never confronted their past do it now when the choice is between healing and survival? </i>

It took my quite awhile to get into this one. Eventually I did, and I ended up enjoying it, but I found one of the two women far more sympathetic than the other, which made it hard to fully invest in their story and their path to reconciliation. It also felt a bit slow and unnecessarily long, but just when I’d start to lose interest, it pulled me back in, with a surprising combination of poignancy, humor, and even suspense.

Thank you Barbara O'Neal, Lake Union Publishing, and NetGalley for providing this ARC for review consideration. All opinions expressed are my own.

I was very excited to receive a e-Arc of this book from NetGalley. I've read (and listened to) some of Barbara O'Neil's other books and loved them. I was in the mood for some family drama, and that's what she does so well. This book had a good premise, but it was thin. The reader is presented with the facts in the first bit, and then the book becomes very repetitious. I won't go over what they are, because I don't want any spoilers, but they are repeated again, and again.
My other issue was that the two main characters - Pheobe and Suze allegedly have a "bond" but actually they had a early teenage friendship and then they lied to each other when they were 17. And then there is not a lot of evidence of an actual friendship. Sure, the reader is told about a trip to Paris and some other meetings, but mainly I got how they let each other down and how they lived in different places. Because their friendship felt toxic to me, I was didn't care if they healed the rift. I thought they would do better to walk away, and make some new friends. The last quarter of the book throws on (unrealistic) drama after drama and I just couldn't bring myself to care.
All that said, I think Barbara O'Neil is a good writer and I will read her books in future. This one just did not work for me.

Phoebe and Suze used to as close as sisters. Keeping secrets caused them to drift apart, but then Suze is attacked and Phoebe rushes to her side. Can these women become as close as they used to be? This is a character driven novel and goes from past to present day. The non linear timeline was easy to read and kept me engaged.

Along the rainy Oregon coast two young girls form a connection that spans many glorious, turbulent years. Their story unfolds in dual timelines from when they became best friends on a sandy beach to much later as they’re grown. Suze and Phoebe come from very different types of families, different economic and social status. Suze dreams of NY, being the lead actress, while Phoebe sees colors, nature and beauty from an artist’s eye. Both of them find and lose love. The only constant person is Phoebe’s loving Nana. The girls friendship has many pinnacles and some wrenching fractures. Each has secrets from the other with consequences. Many of their mutual friends come and go with lasting impact on their lives.
This is everything I expected from such a highly acclaimed author and she is deserving of the praise. Her characters have such depth, there’s joy and pain, grief and success, tragedy and guilt. Her insight into human nature and complicated women’s relationship is compelling. You can’t go back. You can’t magically undo all the letters, texts or emails you never sent making things right. Regrets, petty jealousy and hiding things won’t keep you company or make you feel better. Anyone fortunate enough to claim having a best friend isn’t lucky - it’s honestly, forgiveness, no secrets and unending commitment. This is an emotion filled story with beautifully written prose and soulfully rendered love.
Thanks to NetGalley for the digital advance reader copy of “The Starfish Sisters” by Barbara O’Neal, by Lake Union Publishing. These are all my own honest personal thoughts and opinions given voluntarily without compensation.

Phoebe and Suze are twelve when they meet in a small coastal town in Oregon, famous for the sea stacks known as the Starfish Sisters, Suze has recently moved there with her father an evangelist preacher and Phoebe visits her grandmother Beryl in summer.

Phoebe and Suze become best friends, they considered themselves sisters, and they share their teenage troubles, hopes and dreams. Suze’s home life is terrible, her father makes her dress in old fashioned clothes and he won’t let her cut her hair, his punishments are extreme and she’s an outsider at school. The girls keep in contact via Beryl, Suze's father wouldn’t approve of her writing to a friend and he won’t let her be in the school play.

Decades later, Suze is a famous actress, she’s starred in movies and on television and she’s attacked out the front of her house in Hollywood Hills by a member of a racial white supremacist sect.

Phoebe is a successful book illustrator and fabric designer, she’s divorced and lives in Beryl's cottage. Her daughter Stephanie has been offered a job in London, Phoebe is dreading her two girls moving overseas and she loves spending time with her granddaughter Jasmine and like she did with Beryl.

Phoebe and Suze had a falling out, Phoebe knows Suze will be struggling from the attack, it will bring up memories of her childhood and living with her father. Phoebe holds out the olive branch t0 Suze and visits her house overlooking blue cove, this means both women have to confront things that happened in their friendship, and both reconnect with men who they knew as teenage girls, Phoebe with Ben and Suze with Joel.


I received a copy of The Starfish Sisters by Barbara O’Neil from Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The dual timeline narrative delves into the two main characters friendship over the years, how it ebbs and flows, both have experienced heartbreak, and Phoebe feels guilty because she kept a secret from Suze and she was jealous.

I really admired Suze’s character, once a broken, shamed teenager and she vowed to stand up for other girls in her position, speak up and use what happened to her to bring about change. Five stars from me, a story about the power of friendship, with age comes wisdom and it’s never too late to make things right. I'm keen to read Ms. O'Neil's previous book, When We Believed in Mermaids and I can see why she's a best selling author.

I really enjoyed Barbara O'Neal's When We Believed in Mermaids and This Place of Wonder, but this one was really disappointing. I pushed through a very slow beginning and thought this would be a Did Not Finish (DNF) for me, but I managed to get through it in 5 days (much longer than it usually takes me to get through a 344-page book). Phoebe and Suze are lifelong best friends who have a love/hate relationship filled with jealousy and resentment. They grew up together in a small coastal town In Oregon as close as sisters, both going on to be successful. Suze overcame an abusive family environment to become a famous actress and Phoebe became an accomplished artist. The secrets they kept from each other wound up undermining their already-fraught and complicated friendship and they had to figure out if they could ever recover. This one is slow and tough to plod through, so I don't recommend it. I hope Barbara O'Neal's next one will be much better. Thanks to #netgalley and #lakeunionpublishing for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you, Netgalley!

I have mixed feelings. I think this story had a lot of potential. The characters were well defined and I loved the idea of a beach setting (which is what drew me to the book), but the story itself was lacking.

Somehow this book managed to be 98% exposition and 2% plot.

That is to say... nothing really happened. It seemed that O'Neal was trying to do too many things in too few pages.

>The dual POVs
>Jumping back and forth in time
>Storytelling and letters
>The abusive, religious zealot father
>The great grandmother
>The bickering then divorcing parents
>The hippies at the house
>The entire Joel (past and present)
>Ben romance
>The LNB attacks
>The pregnancy

Among a number of other plot lines. It made the entire book seem shallow because there wasn't enough on any subject to get invested. Any one of those would have made for a good story, but thrown together, it felt messy.

Wow! I'm sort of speechless at the end of this story. The writing was so good, the story was enticing and it was hard to put down. I enjoyed the dual time line and the diary entries. I was impressed at the depth of both characters and the reality of the religious feelings Suze struggles with towards the end of the book. I liked that both women found their way to love at the end and that they both found their way back to each other. Overall this gave me "Beaches" vibes, which I loved!

But Major child abuse trigger warnings.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy to read.

A book about friendship and how it changes as we get older. 2 friends coming back together after years apart because one of them was badly hurt and needed to get away to so where she thought she was safe, the house right next to her friend. They work to repair their friendship and finally put everything on the table including the lies they told each other. It was a good book with some twists that I wasn’t expecting and a sweet ending.

The Starfish Sisters is an emotional and beautiful story of friendship. The ups and downs that sometimes can happen in these relationships.

I loved this book and recommend it completely
Thank you Netgalley and publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own

I became a fan of Barbara O'Neal's when I read her book We Believe in Mermaids. I believe that she does a great job of capturing female relationships/friendships, and The Starfish Sisters was no different.

This book follows the deep friendship (essentially sisterhood) of Phoebe and Suze. Phoebe is a popular artist, and Suze is a well-known actress. Both women have lived a lot of life, enough to know what is important. Both are carrying secrets from the past that can threaten their future friendship.

I loved how O'Neal showed the good and the bad of a friendship. I would rate this four stars only because I feel like her books are formulaic, but I think they present a lot of depth with realistic, likeable characters.

"The Starfish Sisters" by Barbara O'Neal is a touching and complex exploration of female friendship, secrets, and resilience. The story revolves around Phoebe and Suze, who used to be as close as sisters until their shared secrets drove a wedge between them. Now, decades later, Suze, a famous actress seeking refuge, returns to their coastal town, forcing Phoebe to confront the past and the unsaid words between them.

This novel beautifully portrays the intricacies of women's relationships, capturing both the joys and heartaches of life. It highlights the strength and power that women possess, even when faced with difficult choices between healing and survival.

In summary, "The Starfish Sisters" is a heartfelt and multi-layered story that delves into the depths of friendship, making it a compelling read for those who enjoy books that explore the complexities of human connections.

Summer holiday best friends Phoebe and Suze were inseparable until resentment and lies tore them apart at the end of their teens.

They both built their own lives following their childhood dreams - Suze as a successful actress and Phoebe as an artist and illustrator.

Following an attempt on Suze's life, Phoebe tries to reconnect, but the time is not right. Later on they are both back at the coastal town in Oregon where they spent summers as children.

Well-kept secrets come to the surface and yet again test their friendship but by working together they are both stronger - and surrounded by friends.

The Starfish Sisters is an emotional and beautiful story of complicated friendship, how we sometimes get so stuck in our own grief and fail to see the bigger picture - and reach out to those that need us.

This is the story of Phoebe and Suze, who met as young girls and essentially found the sister neither of them had. They grew up in very different lifestyles but were able to develop a very strong bond through summer and holidays together in Oregon, and through shared diary entries.

As adults, Suze is a famous actress, and recovering from a vicious attack. She comes back to the same area of her childhood and gets to spend more time with Phoebe and her granddaughter Jasmine who is struggling with an upcoming move to Europe. This book includes some mystery as Suze is worried that her attackers are still after her. The book also deals with the struggle of various relationships.

A very emotional read, this story captures the intense friendship of two women from childhood through their mature years. I enjoyed the characters and the storyline! Fans of women’s fiction will adore this story!

The Starfish Sisters explores the relationship between two female friends throughout the years. Jealousy, child abuse,, love, both lost and found, are prominent themes. The secrets left unshared stay between them. A nicely paced book, it kept me engaged.

I have read this author's other book and enjoyed them. This one I did not care for. Two friends on the Oregon Coast are reunited after one is savagely beaten at her home in LA. Flash back to when they were children and how their lives were changed by their parents and their friends. Upsetting parts of the story line leads to a conclusion that seems to put everything right.