The Favorite Sister is an easy read with great characters (and some not so great but not because of the writing). It is like a soap opera meets your favorite mystery series. A great novel; I really enjoyed it.

An interesting story with numerous unreliable narrators. I found the characters intriguing and I found myself reading this book for long stretches at a time because I had to know what was going to happen and how the murder happened.
Well done. I've already found her first book and I can't wait to read it!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a copy of the ebook for review.

The Favourite Sister is a multi-perspective novel focused on a New York based reality TV show about the lives of successful women entrepreneurs. Threading the narrative together through the past and present timelines is the murder of one of the women, Brett.
This book was a slog for me to get through, the character's voices were all painfully similar, making it nearly impossible to differentiate them from one another - even with their names and the date listed helpfully at the beginning of each chapter. The difference in the characters' motivation between their on and off screen personas did not help to allay any of the confusion. The secrets that the women have been harbouring are exposed in quick succession in the final chapters of the book, but the experience for the reader is a desperate, all out race to find rock bottom.
It is possible that my aversion to watching reality TV coloured my reading experience, but I enjoyed Knoll's debut novel and went into this novel in good faith. I find myself unable to generally recommend the book, but perhaps this story will be of interest to fans of the reality TV genre.

What you can expect: mystery, backstabbing, glamour and drama.

I could best categorize "The Favourite Sister" by Jessica Knoll as a women's fiction novel. The theme is a reality show similar to "The Housewives of" except that all but one of the women are not mothers and are portrayed as successful YOUNG women. Once a woman reaches the dreaded age of 34 she will be let go from the show.

The point of view switches from present, to past and from character to character. I think this is what makes the novel so difficult to get through. It is hard to know which point of view you are in when you put down the novel and come back to it.

The characters themselves are complex and each have a very distinctive personality. As readers we find out at the very beginning that one of the "Housewives" has been killed and then the plot goes through the events of the past to reconstruct what happened. I do sort of wish we were given just slightly more information about the death at the beginning, just something more to hold onto as the novel goes on. In the middle of the story the plot drags on a bit to the point where as a reader you might even second guess that someone is really going to die at the end. As a reader I wanted to be more engaged in the mystery than in the drama and glamour of each woman.

As many other reviewers have mentioned, the conclusion is very abrupt. After a lengthy novel that takes a while to plough through, I felt somewhat letdown by the ending.

Overall I have given "The Favorite Sister" a 3 out of 5. I think some people will just enjoy the drama and glamour of the women's lives and not be too concerned about the mystery in the plot. For myself I wouldn't pick it up to re-read it again.

I also want to thank NetGalley and the Publisher MacMillan for the opportunity to read an ebook copy of "The Favorite Sister" by Jessica Knoll.

Thanks for the opportunity to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book. I tried several times and although the book was well written, I could not complete the book. I would still give it a try (could have been just me) . I like Jessica Knoll's other novel , she writes well , Just from the premise I would say it would make a great movie.

Entertaining and fun to read. I was expecting more of a thriller as per the synopsis but I felt the genre was women’s contemporary fiction. Good, strong female characters although confusing at times as to who was who, and past and present. A decent novel that should appeal to a wide audience.

Wow! So many lies and so much drama! This story took us on thrilling dark ride through the inner workings, lies and backstabbing of 5 woman on a reality tv show, where one of them ends up dead! It was filled with multiple pov’s and twists and turns I didn’t see coming! It was enthralling, entertaining, raw, sad, powerful and fascinating! I really, really enjoyed it and it felt just like watching one of the reality housewife shows! Fabulous book! * I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review *

I really enjoyed reading this book. I am a fairly naive and straightforward person and therefore not accustomed to mind games and this book was all about that. Having said one thing and really meaning something else. I loved exploring the different relationships between the characters. The ending was unpredictable and satisfying.

Unfortunately this book was not for me, and I discontinued reading at 31%. It's very rare that I don't finish a book, but each sitting felt like a slog, and there wasn't anything going on that held my interest. I appreciate what Jessica Knoll is trying to do with The Favorite Sister, but it wasn't coming together for me. This far into the book, there had been no plot advancement - just women being cruel to each other. Thank you so much to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for this advanced copy, I look forward to reviewing more books soon!

WAY better than her first book. I loved this, it was such a good mash up of reality tv meets book form.

I am a big fan of Jessica Knoll's "The Luckiest Girl Alive" and often recommend it to friends and family. I was thrilled to receive access to an ARC of Knoll's upcoming work "The Favourite Sister" and started reading it immediately. Although this book was full of twists and turns right up until the very last page, it was unable to keep my attention. The storyline really dragged on in many places and had you hoping it would pick up the pace. Despite my intrigue into "What happen to Brett?" I found myself dispising every single character by the end of the book. I was really looking for (at least some of) these women to have any redeeming qualities but was instead left with a bad taste in my mouth.

I'd give this book 5 stars for plot twist and surprise factor but only 2 stars for overall enjoyment.

I loved the author's first novel so I was excited to get this book. Sadly I was just not able to get into it. The premise sounded interesting but somewhere along the line, I just lost interest in the first few chapters and it felt like forced reading.

I wish to thank NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for an advanced copy of this book. From the description I thought I would enjoy it, so feel badly for my honest but negative review.
I read Luckiest Girl Alive and disliked it because of the unpleasant main character and found the constant mention of expensive name brand accessories. Designer fashions, cars, etc strange.

This time we have five unlikable women in New York City. They are young, diverse, strong, powerful and highly successful and have been chosen for an ongoing reality series. Their ambition includes putting down others by gossip, backstabbing and hints of scandal. They are wealthy, but also arrogant, shallow and selfish.

I got the impression that successful woman are disagreeable and cannot support one another, putting forth effort into sabotaging others’ success. I am sure that is not what the author wished to convey.

I was unable to connect with the characters, storyline or writing style. I believe that the book will be widely read and liked because the previous one was a best seller, and there will be an audience for it. I found the women all blended together in my mind while I plodded along trying to keep them straight, but finally ceased to care. Not feeling any suspense. We learned at the beginning that one of the women is dead, but was not invested in the character to wonder how or why. There was a lot of mention of expensive brands, designer clothing, costly restaurants with name dropping of actual celebrities they knew or met. Their frequent use of Instagram I guess was to emphasize how contemporary the setting was.

I rarely give up on a book, but did not finish.

I enjoy Jessica Knoll's writing style; it's clever, snarky and keeps you engaged. There were some great moments that had me thinking about <i> The Affair </i>, a TV show that plays with subtleties in perception quite a bit. And yet, there were other moments when I found that the voices of each character were just not adequately differentiated and I had to backtrack to double-check who was narrating... Overall, I think fans of Luckiest Girl Alive will enjoy this follow-up, but I don't know that it measures up to the author's debut.

<i> Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a review copy in exchange for an honest review. </i>