A deep and emotional story of four sisters raised in a family riddled with dysfunction and of their falling apart when one sister overdoses and dies. Addiction, denial, withdrawal and implosion mark their inability to grieve and shakes their unraveling relationships.
Not an easy read but a meaningful look at the ever changing landscape of grief and familial relationships.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This book is getting a lot of buzz right now, and it's well-deserved! It is a very real look at three sisters who are grappling with the one-year anniversary of their sister's death. As the story unfolds, you learn more about how the sister died and how that fits into the larger family dynamic. The characters were incredibly well-developed; they were all flawed but you couldn't help rooting for them. This book deals with heavier topics (primarily addiction and alcoholism) and the story is serious, but it never feels like it's trying too hard. Highly recommend for a fall read!

i was so excited to read blue sisters, but i started reading it at a not great mental health time for me so for my own sanity and safety i had to pause it. i'm planning on coming back to this book once i'm feeling a bit better and can fully appreciate the work that coco mellors has created. from what i did read though, i was very invested in these sisters and their story. i'm sure that this book will really hit me emotionally and i can't wait until i'm ready to absorb it

i read cleopatra & frankenstein earlier this year with my friends, and we gushed over it. what a debut! we’ve been using the metaphor of the hole of loneliness since then, and i’ve been excited to read mellor’s next book. it did not disappoint!!!!

firstly I’ll say this: man, if you’ve ever wanted sisters and looked on in admiration of the very unique and special relationship sisters have with one another, this will drive you back to that headspace so easy!

this book is filled with characters who make bad choices who you’ll love anyway. coco does an excellent job at portraying different responses to grief, none of them right or wrong, they just are. each of the sisters can be self-destructive, vindictive, guarded, and careless at times but in their own ways and for their own reasons. it was interesting to see the display of grief not when it’s immediately fresh, but year later when those not close to the deceased may not be in the thick of it in the same way the sisters/protagonists are. as someone who doesn’t have sisters, to me the arguments between them felt very authentic and were exactly what i imagined it would be like to have them: extremely brutal at times but extremely loving and all-encompassing at others. all the sisters’ actions and words felt very informed by their pasts, and you get the feeling reading this that there are hundreds of other details coco wrote but chose to left out that also inform the characters. they’re self affected but also dripping in a personal history.

while i’ve seen some other ARC reviews say that the split perspectives through chapters result in underdeveloped storylines, i didn’t find that to be my experience. Even though side stories like lucky’s brief love entanglement with riley go unfinished, I think it’s something mellors intended to be up to readers’ interpretation. if we were meant to know that she ends up spending her life with him, it would have been included in the epilogue i imagine. because it isn’t, i think he’s just supposed to represent the fleeting people in life who help you in a time of need but ultimately don’t become a fixture of your world, and that’s very realistic to me. don’t we all have people in our lives who we remember fondly for how they’ve helped us, but ultimately no longer talk to for one reason or another? i don’t think stories like that are underdeveloped, i think it’s developed to a point that can be uncomfortable to those who don’t like leaving a book with unanswered questions (i go back and forth on whether i am that kind of reader).

a key point:
i honestly worried during the second half of the book that avery was going to end up pregnant after her affair, and i’m so glad we didn’t go that route. avery, herself a daughter of a mother who didn’t necessarily want her, having a child she doesn’t necessarily want, would have been too painful to read. what cruel irony that would have been - i am thankful mellors didn’t take the opportunity to use the trope and instead gave avery a positive ending (as positive as can be given circumstances).

my gripes: the epilogue and prologue. mellors writes in the book, “it was easy to love someone in the beginnings and endings, it was all that time in between that was so hard” but i think she has the opposite problem when it comes to writing! the middle is successful, complimentary, beautiful, whereas the beginning and endings felt cheesy and lacking of her same style. the epilogue and prologue weren’t cohesive with the rest of the text. subplots like lucky becoming a musician felt added-in-later (like the scene of her in the bathroom with the guitar was placed afterwards to look like foreshadowing) and plot points like avery still being close with chiti & being part of each others lives felt a little unrealistic? i couldn’t (and still can’t) decide if i liked that result or not. i’m unsure if the lack of cohesion was a directed tactic to differentiate the prologue/epilogue from the rest of the text, but it wasn’t a choice i liked.

some favorite quotes:
on the sisters at a spice girls concert: “the feeling that to be a girl with other girls was not some weakness, as they had been told, but a power, the best and luckiest power on earth” !!!!!!! so beautiful so true!

on avery and her relationship with her dad: “she could not have expected that freedom would look like that, a forgetting that was close to, but not, forgiveness”

after an argument with her sisters: “and yet, what Bonnie longed for most… was to be free of this love, just for a day. It was too sticky, too consuming, what she felt for her sisters.”

overall 4/5 for me, i really enjoyed this!

This book is so full of complex contradictions. The Blue sisters are so similar, and yet they're completely different. They are so independent, but they need their sisters as their anchors more than anything. This book is so sad, and yet I loved it. The chapters were long, but I flew through them. The book is about grief, and I felt so much love.

I could go on forever about how many layers this book has- the plot, the characters, etc. I don't know the last book I read that had three narrators who were so developed over so few pages (sub 400).

The Blue sisters are all over the world right now but they're all struggling on the first anniversary of their sister's death. Eventually, they all make their way away from the "wreckage" of their life and to the apartment in which they grew up and the apartment in which their sister died. Each of the sisters not only processes Nicky's death but also their own lives and if they are where they want to be at this point in their life. They deal with relationships, whether they want to expand their families, addiction, etc. There is so much going on in each of the brains of the Blue sisters.

This is a book that I have so much I could say but I also cannot figure out how to pour all my feelings onto the page. I think the first paragraph of the prologue tells you everything you need to know about this book. It is about the complex bonds of sisterhood- a type of love and hate that can only exist among siblings.

“A SISTER IS NOT A friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend?” -Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

Things I liked/loved:
1. The cover.
2. The deep dive into the struggles and unique personality of each sister.
3. Each chapter alternates the POV of one of the 3 living sisters.
4. Self-destruction was not romanticized.
5. The author took heavy material but also added some humor and fun.
6. The complex relationship between sisters.
7. The sisters’ exploration of grief, both individually and together.
8. The epilogue.

Things I didn’t like as much:
1. The chapters are sooooo long.
2. There was so much packed into this book.
3. I wish the author would have included more background as to why the sisters hated their parents so much to give the reader a more complete picture of the girls’ close bond.
4. It became tiring at times reading about the self-destruction spectacle.
5. The story felt more largely focused on addiction than it did on the grief of losing a loved one.

I appreciated the messy relationships that were portrayed between the sisters because they were real; They were flawed and at times toxic relationships, but they were also loving each other to the best of their ability.

Thank you @randomhouse / Ballantine books for allowing me an ARC via @netgalley for my honest review. All thoughts are entirely my own.

“True sisterhood, the king where you grew fingernails in the same womb, were pushed screaming through identical birth canals, is not the same as friendship. You don’t choose each other, and there’s no furtive period of getting to know each other. You’re part of each other from the start. Look at an umbilical cord - tough, sinuous, unlovely, yet essential - and compare it to a friendship bracelet of brightly woven thread. That is the difference between a sister and friend.”

i definitely enjoyed this book, but it was too dense for me. i am not a huge fan of long chapters, and this book has such long chapters and not enough going on with then for me to not start to feel a little bored during them. the writing itself, though, was so well done. there were so many wonderful quotes and moments in this book that kinda made up for the density.

i do feel like nearly every character had the arc they needed, with the exception of Lucky. i feel like Avery and Bonnie got full, complete arca and Lucky’s was only about 80% in comparison. i still did enjoy reading it, especially as an oldest sister, but i wish Lucky’s character just had a bit more of an ending.

thank you to Ballantine and Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book!

as the youngest of four sisters, i've had my fair share of fights, hugs, tears and laughter with all of them. to say my sisters and i couldn't be more different but so similar to the characters in this book is an
understatement. this mostly felt realistic and being able to relate was kinda scary. I usually never pick up books that will remind me of my boring life but this was refreshing. it did give me slightly a bigger appreciation for my sisters and how much they've played second mother and all that they've shielded me from.
this book was so well written, i would a thousand percent buy a physical copy and im glad this was my first book by this author.
thank you to netgalley and publisher for providing this arc in exchange for an honest review

I knew as soon as I read the synopsis and saw the cover that I had to have this book. I'm happy to report that after reading it, I can confirm that it was every bit as good as I expected it to be.

While I only have one sister, reading a book based around several sisters really resonated with me. That sisterly bond is unlike any other. My own sister moved away a few years ago (after us never living more than 30 miles from each other our entire lives), so we are learning to navigate our relationship over our current distance. I could appreciate that same thing in this book - while the sisters in this book moved far away from each other, there was still a bond there that couldn't be broken by geography.

I could also relate to the part about having a parent that is an addict. I wasn't sure how well I was going to handle addiction being such a large focus of the book, but I made it through okay. While it did bring some buried memories to the surface, reading this book certainly didn't cause me any distress.

I always appreciate when book characters are flawed, as that makes them more real to me. So I appreciated their flaws, but also found it a bit unrealistic how easily they conquered some of their problems. If someone has a long-term compulsion, it's generally not as easy as saying "I'm not going to do this anymore", and just stopping forever, without any slip-ups. I'm not saying that never happens, but it's pretty darn rare. So I felt that some things like that were a little too neatly or easily tied up (there were a few things like this, but I'm trying not to give spoilers).
I also would have really loved to see a few chapters from Nicky's viewpoint. I get that she has passed away, but it would have been interesting to see things from her point of view and what she experienced leading up to her death (this isn't a spoiler, we know from the synopsis that she has died). It was obviously a concious choice by the author not to include her viewpoint, I just would have personally liked to have read it.
Lastly, I sometimes struggle with books where everyone is successful and/or wildly wealthy. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but between the three sisters, one's a world-famous model, one's a world-champion boxer, and one's a high-powered, super successful attorney. The sister that died is the only one that had a more typical career, but of course her life isn't really part of the book. I think that for me it just makes it feel less relatable or realistic when all of the characters are that successful and wealthy.

Despite my minor gripes, I really did enjoy this book and liked the format, the story, and the writing. I found myself highlighting several quotes and things that struck a chord with me.

I think this will be a well-loved book that will be especially enjoyed by women with sisters.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

It's hard to review this as a book because it does feel like my life. The first year's anniversary of my sister's death is very fresh in my mind so if you'd asked me how I think I'd find the sisters on the one-year anniversary, I'd have a pretty good idea.

Considering the author hasn't lost a sister, Mellors has a great insight into what life is like. The ramifications of losing a sister, the rippling effect into your entire life and existence. How the sisters communicate and interact as a three. The relationship with their parents. This all felt very close to home and hats off the author for that.

I've seen some reviews that say this book is mis-marketed in terms of sisterhood. I personally think we romanticize the sisterhood. It's not one of all and all for one. It's far more complex than that, and I think the sisterhood showcased here is very well done.


4.75/5 stars!

After seeing so many fantastic early reviews of Blue Sisters, I was so intrigued. I had never read anything by Coco Mellors before and was drawn to the cover, as well as the synopsis. I wanted to love this book, but sadly I did not. The Authors writing style was different from most Authors I read. It’s hard to describe, but I just felt like it was so wordy and maybe tried a little too hard? I also found it odd that parts of the book had such an odd focus on ethnicity. That was a bit of a turn-off as well and my dislike for a couple of the characters took away from the story for me. Overall, I gave this book three stars because I don’t think it’s a bad story overall (so many really loved it!), I just think it just wasn’t a good fit for me. Many thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for allowing me to read an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

I was super into the book with the storyline of 3 sisters with a fourth who had recently died. The chapters rotate between the sisters and the reader is fully into each woman's life. I loved seeing deep into their lives as the intricacies of relationships, work, and addictions are easily seen. The weaknesses and strengths are seen as the reader.

All of this said, I found myself growing weary of what seemed to be a constant drug abuse plot throughout their lives in different ways. A somber story of strength but I never fully felt engaged in the characters overall.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the advance e-copy of this book.

5 stars for this beautiful book! 🩵

Wow. What can I say? This story follows 4 sisters as they navigate through life after one of them passes away and it was so beautifully written and I fell completely in love! 🤧
But man oh man was it so heartbreaking. Their grief, addictions, their personal life, everything about it was perfect!

The book opens up with a quote that says “A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend?” and it just completely reeled me in! 🩵🤧😢 it made me think of my sister so so much. This book will stay with me forever!

Thank you NetGalley and Random House for the ARC!

I absolutely adored Coco Mellors debut novel, Cleopatra and Frankenstein so of course I wanted to read Blue Sisters. I had high expectations going into this one and I am happy to report that this one did not disappoint!

Blue Sisters is like a modern take on Little Women. As an only child, I've always been fascinated by sibling stories. Each of the Blue Sisters was uniquely complex with very distinct voices. This literary character-driven work is beautifully written and had me completely immersed in the Blue family’s lives.

Even though both of Coco Mellor’s books are completely different, I adored Blue Sisters just as much as I did Cleopatra and Frankenstein. Coco Mellors is officially one of my favorite authors and I highly recommend Blue Sisters!

Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors will be available on September 3. Many thanks to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for the gifted e-galley!

I mean one extra letter on my maiden name, how could I not read this. A tale of sisterhood, and a triumvirate of self destructive spiraling. There seemed to be a disconnect between chapters, which is what puts this at a 3.5 for me. Free advanced copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, book originally published 5/23 and this version publishes 9/3

Three disfunctional sisters return to their parents' NY apartment to clean out the belongings of their dead sister because their mother wants to sell the apartment to help pay for their father's treatment.

I really enjoyed this beautiful book and the characters that Coco created. The Blue Sisters was everything I wanted and more. It broke my heart and put it back together again. 🥹

Coco’s characters are all unique and this story flows so well! I can’t recommend this wonderful story enough. This book does deal with heavy topics like grief, d3ath of a loved one, dr*g addiction and more.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for this ARC!

i didn't love this as much as i loved cleopatra and frankenstein but this was still a great read! i adore coco's writing - she really captures flawed characters in an endearing and realistic way. i especially loved the relationship between all the sisters in this (cause baby they were the definition of a hot MESS). the pacing was a bit slow and there were some parts of the book that i felt dragged on, but it definitely was an entertaining and bittersweet read!

we are introduced to the tragic story of Nicky Blue, the third of four sisters, whose life was cut short at 27 by a fentanyl overdose. Nicky's struggle with endometriosis, and the pain management challenges it brought, paints a heart-wrenching backdrop for this exploration of family dynamics and unresolved grief.

As the family apartment in New York—their childhood home—prepares to be sold, the three remaining sisters gather to sift through Nicky's belongings. This act of clearing out the past becomes a powerful and emotional journey, revealing each sister's inner turmoil. They grapple with feelings of guilt and missed warnings about Nicky's addiction, all while contending with their own struggles, shaped by a distant mother and an alcoholic father.

The novel delves deep into themes of family conflict, addiction, and the quest for understanding amidst pain. It's a raw and evocative read that stayed with me long after I finished. I’m looking forward to exploring [Author's Name]'s previous work and diving further into their compelling storytelling.

This is, without a doubt, the most special book I’ve ever read. Every ounce of Blue Sisters was perfect. I’ve never felt more attached to a story than this, with its beautiful, tragic, mesmerizing, shattering, and simultaneous hopeless and hopeful qualities. This deserves to be framed and hung in a museum, memorialized for all time.

It took me so long to finally pick up this ARC out of fear of how much I would love it - and let me tell you, I was right to be afraid. Thank you, NetGalley and Ballantine, for the ARC.