🩵Book Review/ Rambles🩵

♾️⭐️

This was one of the easiest infinity stars I’ve ever given. No doubt. No questions.

Coco has done it again. I was wholly and irretrievably obsessed with Cleo & Frank so Blue Sisters was one of my most anticipated reads of the year and well….Coco absolutely delivered !!

Having a sibling is like being tethered. It is unlike anything you will every experience and the connection you have with them can never be formulated into words. It is precious, infuriating, comforting, heartbreaking and all consuming. They are your home and your guiding light. So what happens when you become … un-tethered?

This book follows three sisters; Avery, Bonnie and Lucky who navigate life and grieve after the passing of their fourth sister, Nicky. They each return back home to New York following Nicky’s passing and must deal with the complexities of trauma, family and love.

Being an oldest sister myself… my heart clung to Avery the most. Same professions, similar mannerisms I mean …I’m pretty sure I audibly heard my heart crack at every chapter of hers. Avery is a blueprint for harbouring the oldest sibling trauma and is is always there for everyone but has to wipe her own tears and weather the storm on her own.

The way Coco writes is so detailed - so so so meticulous with her detail that I feel like I’m there with every character, every part of the book. Her writing gives me comforting, modern, Fitzgerald vibes (he’s one of my fav authors ever) so reading her writing feels like coming home. Coco truly exposed all the sides of humanity and family through these characters and everyone will attach themselves to a character or parts of each character.

There is infinite comfort in this book for me. This was such a perfect and beautiful story that I want to carry and cherish with me forever.

If you haven’t read any of Coco’s work, please do - you won’t regret it 🩵

(Also a moment for the cover??? Her book covers are some of my favourite possible ever!!)

Blue Sisters is a story of sisters Avery, Lucky and Bonnie Blue navigating their grief and personal struggles after their fourth sister, Nicky passes away. Beautifully written and raw, this is a wonderful offering from the author of the hit debut novel 'Cleopatra and Frankenstein'. I loved the unique lives and characters of all three sisters (Bonnie has my heart), and the exploration of messy family dynamics, blame and trauma, addiction and recovery. The epilogue was so sweet too.

Maybe it's because it hit so close to home with its themes of sisterhood, but I enjoyed this one a lot more than Cleopatra & Frankenstein and would absolutely recommend this book.

Thank you so much to HarperCollins and NetGalley for the ARC!

UGH what a gorgeously written novel about sisters, exploring death, grief, mental health, addiction, infidelity and more !!!!! Please Mellors bring us another ASAP.

This was one of my most highly-anticipated novels of 2024 and wow did it smash it out of the park.

Three estranged sisters, each enduring their own struggles on top of grieving their fourth sister's death, are still navigating life and loss twelve months after her death. They need to come together to get the apartment they were raised in ready to sell.

We get POVs from all three of the sisters, getting a close look at how each is coping (or not so) with Nicky's absence. It is confronting, getting a glimpse into a characters life as they're going through so much. One minute you're opening the cover to start your read of Blue Sisters, and the next minute you're crying and feeling like you know these characters in real life. We only get memories of Nicky through the sisters but if felt like we were there through it all, not just that we knew these characters from a year after her death.

The dialogue, the writing, the detail were all just so brilliant!! Someone give Mellors a trophy for being so good at breaking and mending hearts pls.

I’ll be frank – Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors was just not my thing. But others will love it (and I think already do).

At the guts of it, three sisters return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister, Nicky’s, death (from an overdose). Each of the sisters is battling her own demons, and each in her own unique way. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles and hung up the gloves after a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways.

A year after Nicky’s death, the sisters are all navigating grief in different ways. When their parents decide to sell the apartment they grew up in, they come together and are forced to confront the circumstances of the past.

The main theme is grief and in this respect, I’m not sure that Mellors offers anything new. Granted, I’m a tough customer. Bonnie and Lucky’s coping behaviours are amplified (which is expected) – Bonnie struggles to contain her rage, and Lucky wipes herself out at parties. Avery, who has been sober for more than a decade, is the most interesting. She doesn’t succumb to alcohol or drugs but observes –

… she didn’t know how to handle the grief. It was the surprise that hurt most. She had lived her entire adult life minimising risk to avoid being caught off guard by pain, yet she had not protected herself from this.

The relationship between the sisters was interesting, although I don’t think offered any fresh perspective. I don’t have a sister but I recognise that there are dynamics particular to sister relationships. Lucky captures this –

Against their parents, against the world at large they were fiercely allied. But among themselves, everything was a competition.

One aspect of this book that really didn’t work for me, was the sisters attitude toward their parents, who are strangely absent from their lives. There are multiple references to Avery ‘raising’ the younger three, but the reason for why this was the case isn’t really clear, apart from the fact that their father is an alcoholic and that their mother made him a priority. Even then, I’m stating it more plainly than it is treated in the book. Have I missed something?

2/5

I received my copy of Blue Sisters from the publisher, Harper Collins Australia, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Three estranged siblings find their way back together after the death of one of their sisters.

A year after Nicky’s death, navigating grief, addiction and ambition, they each find their way back to the house in New York where they grew up.

Coming home is never easy and as each of the siblings come to terms with Nicky’s death, they discover more about themselves and the secrets keeping them apart.

I loved this book for so many reasons. Is a beautifully written family drama but on top of that it deals with some very deep and often dark topics.

I think it’s also rare, even today, where topics around invisible disability and pain management for ‘women’s issues’ are written about in popular books. Mellors does a great job in writing about Nicky’s struggles with pain and how hard it is to get decent pain management as a woman when a certain amount of pain is considered normal.

While it is a bit dark at times, I loved this book!

Thank you to Harper Collins Publishers Australia, NetGalley and the author for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

Unfortunately, I didn't love Blue Sisters - but I still 'liked' it.

I'm pretty sure it was just a matter of wrong book at the wrong time for me, so I will probably try and re-visit this in the years to come. I quite liked Bonnie's story arc, and it's really interesting to see all the other reviews have different 'favourites', as it were. With that said, I think because there were so many POV's, I found it hard to really settle into the story and seemed to being paying attention to my kindle indicating what percentage I am through the book.

This all might just be because I am not part of a sisterhood!

I'm yet to read Cleo and Frank, so I need to give that a red-hot go.

Thanks to @netgalley and @harpercollins for the ARC!

Beautiful depiction of sisterhood and grief, loved the mention of endometriosis and struggles with chronic illness and the impact this had on their whole family. Tender and touching story

📚 Blue Sisters 📚

Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors hit me hard in the heart and perfectly describes the different ways in which these sisters deal with their grief.

I felt like they were my friends by the end and really hope they are all doing OK after I've closed the book.

I'm also impressed by the representation present in this story amongst the characters. Well done Coco Mellors.

I picked Blue Sisters for Nice Stack's Book Club this month and am very much looking forward to our discussion 🩵

Thank you, Harper Collins and Net Gallery for my Arc

“True sisterhood is not the same as friendship. You don't choose each other and there is no furtive period of getting to know each other. You are a part of each other, right 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 a friend.”


One of my most anticipated reads, and I am truly surprised by how beautiful this book turned out to be. It offers a heartfelt exploration of grief, sisterhood, and addiction. I found myself deeply connected to the sisters, caring for them as if they were my own, despite their privilege and sometimes hurtful actions. The book portrays addiction with such care and avoids glamorising it, which I appreciated. Overall, this was a wonderful and emotional journey. I loved it even more than Cleopatra and Frankenstein. Plus, the cover is stunning.

There are four Blue sisters. Avery, the eldest who now lives in London as the “perfect” sister after a brief stint of addiction in her 20s. Bonnie, the stoic boxing champion. Nicky, the meant to be mother, teacher. Lucky, the model and wild youngest sister. When Nicky dies the sisters lives begin to fall apart. A year later they re-meet in New York and finally learn to grieve, live and face life once more.

This book is a beautiful story of love, family and grief. With some similarities to Cleopatra and Frankenstein, with characters having some unlikeable traits, these characters are ones you find yourself able to forgive and love much faster. This book is different in many ways despite that beautiful writing style of Mellors. If you weren’t a fan of Cleopatra and Frankenstein because of the characters, I suggest you give this one a go instead as the characters are actually likeable this time! And the story is just heart-warming as well as heart-wrenching!

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC!

4.5⭐️

I snaffled this up on a day I really needed something affirming about family and resilience. I AM a sister but I don’t HAVE a sister – nonetheless, as is often the case in a big family, I do have female cousins I feel very close to, that I once I can count on in that same sisterly way, and I thought of them often as I read this story.
 
Mellors is such a big storyteller – she doesn’t shy away from the tough stuff, like addiction and mental health and bodies and breakdowns. Whereas in Cleo and Frank, we saw this balanced with humour, I think here we see it balanced with familial love. And it’s the kind of love that comes with a lot of unspoken agreement – that you will find each other always, forgive each other always, speak truths always. But as Mellors shows, its usually WAY more complicated than that 😅
 
But what’s it about?? I’m not going to say too much, because I actually went in pretty blind and found myself turning the pages and wanting to know more for that very reason. BUT as you can probably guess, it’s about 3 sisters with very different personalities and lives, who are mourning the unexpected death of their fourth beloved sister. When we meet them in the prologue (which got me IMMEDIATELY invested by the way!), we understand that they’re living all over the world and that they’re all hiding or trying to escape something. This is the sort of premise I love, especially when Mellors so effectively drops hints of what’s to come throughout the book.
 
Like her debut novel, this has some tough scenes – but Mellors writes with ease and doesn’t make demands I think readers can’t handle. It’s plotty and pacey and you don’t need to overthink anything about it.

I think the success of a book like this, with a cast of characters very emotionally different to each other, is that everyone will find something to relate to even if, like me, you don’t have a sister. I think that always makes a reading experience a little richer.

I LOVED this book! This was a wonderful exploration of grief, addiction and sisterhood. My favourite sister is Bonnie, however, all the sisters read like they were real. I recommend to everyone!

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

There were four Blue sisters - Avery, Bonnie, Nicky and Lucky. One year ago, Nicky passed away, and the sisters haven’t been together since. Avery, a successful lawyer (and former drug addict) lives in London with her wife. Bonnie, a successful boxer, has left boxing and run away to LA. Lucky is a free spirited model who likes to party. When they discover that their parents are planning to sell the New York apartment they grew up in, they are forced to confront their past and how they got to where they are today.

Oh my. I cannot express how much I enjoyed this book. It was beautifully written, raw with emotion. I loved that each of the sisters were not perfect, and that we got to learn about each of them, and witness their growth.

Honestly, all I can say is do yourself a favour and read this book.

Thanks to @harpercollinsaustralia and @netgalley for the review copy.

Firstly - the cover - I swoon. Just perfect. The one with the four sisters on it - also exquisite, but this one is my fave.

Secondly - the book - yes. I get the hype and the praise. I loved it. From the title to the last sentence I was all in.

The story is of the Blue Sisters (yes that's their name, and their mood). Four sisters rocked by tragedy and the aftermath of said tragedy. It is told through multiple POV's, and sometimes I will favour one over the other, but not with this book. I was equally invested and interested in each one of them. They were messy, annoying, vulnerable, and real. The dynamic between them all was spot on too. The fighting, the different pairings, the unconditional love, just the way sisters can be. I have 2 sisters, and 3 daughters so I feel like I'm equipped to judge.

There are notes of Hello Beautiful, mostly the sister relationships (and the stunning covers), but I found this one was more in depth and I felt closer or as if I knew these sisters more than those in HB. Perhaps some of Sunbathing too - or maybe now I'm just listing books about sisters...

Surprisingly I did not cry at all, but I was definitely moved. Highly recommend.

I wasn't a HUGE fan of this book, I was interested in reading it because of the success of Cleopatra and Frankenstein, which I also didn't like but I thought I would give this one a go.. I didn't like the writing style of this one unfortunately, the story itself lacked something in my opinion, I didn't like the characters and it just dragged. I found it hard to feel for the sister when they did the wrong this over and over again. The only reason I finished it was because I was sent the copy in return for the review.

Coco Mellors second novel Blue Sisters was my first experience with her work but you can be sure I'm going back to read Cleopatra and Frankenstein as soon as possible!

This was such an easy and engaging read despite it being primarily a novel about grief and addiction. The Blue sisters - Avery, Bonnie and Lucky - reunite a year after the sudden death of their beloved fourth sister Nicky. Each has been dealing with Nicky's death in their own way. But they are forced to confront their grief and disappointments in life when they come together in New York as their parents threaten to sell the apartment they grew up in and where Nicky died.

The Blue sisters lives are messy, they've made mistakes, they've come undone but ultimately together they can help each other heal. I loved the family dynamics. I loved how each sisters life was examined in turn. And I loved how their bonds ultimately overcome the issues they were each facing.

I really enjoyed this reading experience. And can we also talk about how exquisite the cover design is? I love it!

Thank you to @netgalley and @harpercollinsaustralia for my #gifted copy.

I really loved this book. I’m endlessly impressed by the way in which Mellors slips between character POVs in such a realistic way, with every character feeling distinctive and the book still flowing beautifully.

This book looks at grief, addiction and family in such a raw, honest way and I adored it. The characters are often times dislikable but not to the extent where I did not care about them. I am thoroughly impressed and definitely will be giving Coco Mellors future work a read!

3.75/5 ⭐️ (rounded down from 4 star)

The follow up to her debut, Cleopatra & Frankenstein, Blue Sisters follows three sisters (Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky) in the year after the death of their sister, Nicky.

Blue Sisters felt more like an exploration of the addictions that these three sisters have as opposed to their grief. Their lives are inexplicably pretty screwed up, particularly Avery and Lucky. This is a very character driven story with the triple perspectives of these sisters and I really liked the narrative style.

In the absense of my own relationship with my sisters I did quite enjoy this, though I think my rating and reading experience was slightly tainted as I (gratefully) read this as an e-arc. I think this is one I would like to revisit as a physical copy (plus the cover is gorgeous!).

Overall, I would recommend this, and I definitely hope to revisit it someday.

Thank you NetGalley & Harper Collins for the arc, much appreciated!

Exactly two years ago I was reading Cleopatra and Frankenstein. I didn’t particularly enjoy that book but there was something about Mellors’ writing that held promise and so here I am having read book number two, Blue Sisters. As a writer Mellors’ has definitely shown some progression. This book was easily bingeable and I found myself eager to read as the book progressed. However it just lacked something I can’t quite place. A bit saccarine, slightly twee; for a book dealing with big topics (grief, addiction, self destructive behaviours) there was a lack of visceral conviction to really affect me as a reader. The characters all contained the air of a caricature, which made the intertwining narratives somehow feel all slightly surface level, even though I’m sure that’s not the intention. For me a good read, but not a great one.

I’m predicting another best seller for 2024!

Following the huge success of Cleopatra and Frankenstein, Coco Mellors has released another potential chart topper!!!

Three imperfect sisters, Avery, Bonnie and Lucky Blue are grieving the sudden loss of their sister Nicky each in their own unique and somewhat dysfunctional way.

Mellors’ characterisation of the three sisters is well crafted and sure to resonate with readers.

There are themes of grief, addiction, trauma, and the dynamics of complex familial relationships.

Whilst there were sections of the book that did slow the flow, overall, I was invested in the characters’ stories and really enjoyed it.

Readers who love a juicy family drama are going to devour this. 💙

Thank you @cocomellors and @netgalley for an advanced copy. 💙