I was excited to read Coco Mellors sophomore effort after loving her debut, Cleopatra & Frankenstein. Mellors returns to form with a rich, deep exploration of character - this time in the form of a family, specifically the Blue sisters. The four girls could not be more different, yet their shared history, which includes a healthy amount of trauma and anguish, and their unwavering love for one another unite them throughout the years and across the globe. When one of the sisters passes tragically and unexpectedly, the remaining three are left to navigate the puzzle that is the world with their shared missing piece. Tracing all three sisters over the course of the year after the death and highlighted the complex nuances of grief, addiction, shame, and, ultimately, love - this novel's beating heart shines throughout each chapter. Mellors' talent lies in her ability to make her characters full individuals, despite their broken pieces. By the end of the novel, I felt like I had truly spent a year getting to intimately know each character and their motivations and actions made complete sense for their personalities. For fans of Sally Rooney, Dolly Alderton, and Ottessa Moshfegh. This one was a winner for me!

<blockquote>"She was home, the only one she knew, not because she always lived in it, but because it always lived in her."</blockquote>

Oof. That line hit me hard.

Thank you Random House for giving me an e-arc of this book. 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

This is a very introspective novel about three sisters grieving the loss of their fourth. In a multi-POV novel, it's expected that you'll feel more connected to some characters than others. I really enjoyed reading Avery and Bonnie's POVs, especially Avery's. I thought she was flawed and realistic and I thought the journey with her relationship was the most dynamic. Bonnie was also an interesting character, though the "romance" with her story I didn't like as much. Lucky was my least favorite of the sisters.

The novel had a lot of beautiful lines about sisterhood and feeling lost in life. One thing I felt oddly missing was Nicky. She's dead, but she's "on the page" a lot through flashbacks (maybe too many flashbacks? I thought some could've been cut). However, I didn't really feel like I got to know who Nicky truly was as much as I would've liked. Basically, even though this is meant to be a very emotional novel, I didn't feel too many emotions regarding Nicky because she wasn't as fleshed out as the other sisters in my opinion.

<spoiler>*SPOILER*
I did not like how Bonnie's arc with Pavel ended. I was hoping, because he gave zero signs of being interested in her, that Bonnie would've had to learn to deal with loving someone who doesn't love her back, at least not romantically. But nope. She admits she's always loved him and bam, next thing you know they're having a baby. Firstly, it's very hard to convince me this relationship is cute and wholesome when this man knew her when she was 15 and he was pushing 30. </spoiler>

This book is set to release September 3, 2024 and I'd recommend it for lovers of literary fiction who enjoy slower paced, character studies.

Link to review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6411771111

we follow the four blue sisters: avery, bonnie, nicky and lucky. nicky died by an accidental overdose; leaving her sisters behind. each extremely different from one another. avery is the eldest; who acts as a second mom. she struggled with addiction in her youth but since then followed a program and is in active recovery; she becomes a successful lawyer. bonnie is super sporty and tough but deep down she is the most tender of the sisters. she was a rising boxer but after nicky's death she moves to california leaving behind her promising boxing career. lucky is the youngest and wildest from the bunch. launching a successful modeling career at 15, she's always been a wild child but she finds herself lost and wanting to find another path that isn't modeling.
the girls all had a difficult relationship with both their parents. their dad struggled with alcohol so they didn't have a stable life at home; finding solace in each others' company growing up. now a year after nicky's death, their parents decide on selling their childhood home which brings them to an unlikely reunion that's filled with pain, suppressed anger and ultimately love.
i have been looking forward to this read especially after reading the description. coco mellors has a way of writing that's very current to this generation without trying too hard. it was easy for me to imagine all the characters and scenes with the detailed description. i was drawn to bonnie's story the most! such an easy character to love. i also appreciated how coco mellors wrote about the fellowships and rooms so well; this book tugged on multiple heartstrings for me. the acknowledgments section was also so heartwarming to have read, especially the section acknowledging the rooms of aa.

At its center this novel is about sisterhood, but it is also about the universal hurt that we will all experience at least once in our lives: grief. How do we respond? How do we live our lives carrying this hurt around?
 
Told from the perspectives of the Blue sisters, in the wake of tragedy, this novel is both cerebrally tender, and achingly melancholic.
 
Having no sisters myself, I put my trust into Mellors to bring me forth into the messy web that is sisterhood, and she delivered.
 
A beautiful and brilliant book about familial bonds and how misfortune is dealt with within the family dynamic and beyond.

I was spellbound, completely desperate for the next page as I was turning them.

(Many thanks to Random House for the eARC of this wonderful novel)

Heartfelt and beautiful, I couldn’t put it down. Mellors’ stunning prose will stay with me for a long while

this was one of my most highly anticipated books of the year! blue sisters follows avery, bonnie, and lucky reuniting a year after the death of their sister nicky.

i think where this book shined the most was in the character dynamics. the relationships between the sisters and those around them was extremely raw & real. it was super fascinating to see the different ways they dealt with the grief and pain, as well as how they paralleled one another. they frequently thought the same things verbatim, sought out the same addictions, and made the same connections back to nicky.

for a lot of the book i was a bit confused about where it was going. or rather, i had a sense of where it was going and I wasn’t sure i’d enjoy it. on that note, i do think the ending chapters were wrapped up a bit too neatly in a all-was-well-happily-ever-after bow for my taste.

overall, i enjoyed my time with this one! coco mellors has a knack for writing really interesting and complicated characters who are going through it — and i’m here for it :)

Thank you NetGalley, Random House, and Coco Mellors for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

Blue Sisters was my most anticipated read of the year and wow, Coco does it again. while I didn't love Cleo and Frank, I loved how they made me feel. the blue sisters did the same thing, I think. heartbroken, hopeful, and troubled. I think each one made me cry in a different way. Bonnie, with her love. Lucky, with her loneliness. Avery, with never feeling good enough. and finally, Nicky, with her hidden pain. to what extent do you truly know what another person is going through? even if you are the same blood. Coco touches on these subjects so softly, yet so hard and truthful.

I also admire the perspective we saw the sisters in. the reader was an outsider, but was also in on their darkest secrets. we could form out own judgements, but not without a bit of empathy.

this is all to say I had every single one of my heart strings pulled in a different direction. I hope the Blue sisters are existing together, somewhere in the afterlife. where Nicky could join them as say, "you are not that important."

'The Blue Sisters' is like a rollercoaster ride of emotions, just like 'Cleo' and 'Frankenstein.' You're hooked from the get-go, following these sisters through their ups and downs, and let me tell you, there are plenty. But what really sets this book apart is how it taps into the power of family. If you are in to family relationships 'The Blue Sisters' is your jam!" #bluesisters #netgalley

Blue Sisters is about four sisters - Lucky, Avery, Bonnie, and NIcky (who has since tragically died). The entire book discusses how they've recovered from her sudden death and the pain of it all.

Lucky - a successful model since the age of 15 (dealing with drug abuse)
Bonnie - a successful professional boxer (who loves the pain)
Avery - a now successful lawyer living in London with her wife, also a former drug addict (painful)

While I love a good family centered story, one that dives into the past and now present, I found this one to have back stories that tended to drag, and some present scenes that didn't even need to be in the book. They did not need to make or break the entire premise of the novel - which is to unite the three sisters in their former apartment in NYC. I would have loved to skip some of Lucky's partying scenes, have more emphasis on their broken relationship with their parents, and I found Bonnie's professional boxing life neither here nor there.

All in all, Coco Mellors is a good writer, but Blue Sisters was just another simple book on family relationships.

Thanks Netgalley for the advanced book review!

Posted on GoodReads April 5, 2024
Blue Sisters follows 3 sisters navigating the loss of their 4th sister while working through their own grief, relationships and addictions. This book is absolutely STUNNING. I was laughing, sobbing, and absolutely feeling the pain of each sister.

As the oldest sister of 3 siblings, I saw so much of myself in Avery. Absolutely fantastic read by Coco Mellors.

Such a deep character study on the Blue sisters. Some of them are the most frustrating characters I’ve ever read about, but seeing them grow from their trauma and become close after the death of their sister was beautiful to witness. The first half of the book was a little rough, it took me a while to actually grow and care about any of them that deeply. But then I found myself crying from said frustrating character at the end. This book is so mundane and just following along the characters, which is something I’ve found that I enjoy the most in literary fiction (no plot just characters).

a really gorgeous slow-burn exploring grief, sisterhood, motherhood, and addiction.

blue sisters didn’t land for me quite as hard as cleopatra and frankenstein did, but i think that’s just a personal thing—for people who have sisters, i feel like this could be <i>the</i> book, given how vividly the familial dynamic is written! each sister individually is also lovely; they’re all extremely flawed people, grappling with their own secrets, but the way they’re written makes them feel unbelievably human.

the only con this book really has, at least for me, is that it’s a pretty slow burn; with the synopsis of the book being what it is, i kind of expected that the sisters would be together sooner and spend a little bit more time together. as-written, it did still work, but something about the mismatch between what i thought the structure of the book would be vs the reality did make the first half or so feel a tiny bit stretched out.

regardless, coco mellors’ writing is stunning, and if she writes it, i’ll read it. 4/5 stars!!

Wow. Coming from someone who loved Cleopatra and Frankenstein, Blue Sisters is next level. Words can barely describe how much this book means to me.

I come from a family of girls and at times throughout this book it felt like I was reading about my sisters and me. The realistic depiction of sisterhood is something that I’ve never found in a book before, at least I’ve never read a book that is this well done. The storyline, the characters, the writing… everything was amazing to read about and resonated so much with me. I saw so much of myself within each of the sisters (especially Bonnie as a fellow middle sister), and so much of my sisters in each of them, too. I loved reading about the sister’s individual storylines as well as their dynamic together. There truly is nothing like the relationship between sisters, and seeing that exemplified throughout this novel made me feel so many things. This story is beautiful, heartwarming, funny, and tragic, I laughed, cried, felt angry at times. But that’s everything that I love finding in a book and what makes me love reading so much.

I read 100+ books per year, like many of you, so you know how difficult it is to choose a favorite. I do not say this slightly; Blue Sisters just shot straight to the top of my list.

I loved this book. I've been a fan of Coco Mellors since Cleopatra and Frankenstein came out and I was so excited to read this. It did not disappoint. It follows three sisters as they navigate life after their fourth sister's death while struggling with addiction issues. I adored the sisters' dynamic and their relationship with people outside their family, as well as the exploration of motherhood. I fell in love with each one of the sisters but I also hated them at times, which made them so real and human. I love the way Mellors writes characters. I hope to read more of her books in the future.

Avery, Bonnie, Nicky and Lucky Blue. The Blue sisters grew up depending on each other more than they could ever depend on anyone else.
Following the death of Nicky, Avery Bonnie and Lucky reluctantly converge at their childhood New York apartment from different corners of the world in order to collect Nicky’s belongings. Each sister is arriving to New York at different points in their life, each muddling through their own self destructive choices. Each sister is instrumental to the story, without stealing the spotlight or fading into the background.
This is not just a story of grief. This is not just a story about sisters, or individual women going through the hardest experience of their lives. This is a story of healing, and the power we achieve when we allow other people to care for us. There is no right way to grieve, nor is it linear. Grief is messy, and Mellors translates that by making the reader feel like a part of the cast. I did not feel like an outsider, or an audience member reading this novel. I felt the loss of Nicky as strongly as I felt care and concern for Avery, Bonnie and Lucky. I felt the shame of their mistakes and the joys of their triumphs. That is to say, this is an emotional rollercoaster of a story. This is not a light, feel good novel. This story snakes into your body and wraps itself around your heart, holding you hostage until you reach the conclusion.
It’s hard to say much more without getting too far into the specific plot points, and this is a book that you should go into knowing as little as possible. I can see this one sticking with me for a long time.

This review will be posted to the instagram account @within_words on April 12th, 2024.

I received an ARC from Netgalley prior to publication September 3rd, 2024!
Coco Mellor's debut novel, Cleopatra and Frankenstein, was my favorite book of 2022, so I watch itching for a chance to read Blue Sisters!
Blue Sisters follows Avery, Bonnie, Nicky, and Lucky Blue. Raised in NYC and now spread out across the globe, the three remaining Blue sisters are navigating the death of their middle sister, Nicky. A year after her death, and all three sisters are reckoning with their grief in different, destructive ways. Their mother notifies them that they will be selling the family apartment, the one where they were raised and where Nicky was found dead. The surviving Blue sisters are reunited in this family drama about sisterhood, grief, addiction, pain, and resentment.
Coco Mellors could teach a master class on creating nuanced characters. The way she develops characters is impeccable, and you feel attached to every one in a different way. (Though, I HATED Avery, but I think that was intentional). I was so moved by so many parts of this book. I would highly recommend it if you have more than one sister. I feel like having separate, differing relationships with your sisters would give you an extra layer of understanding about these dynamics.
I did dock one star for two reasons. 1. I was NOT into the love story component with Bonnie and Pavel. I hated the Russian accent in the dialogue, and I couldn't get their chemistry. It gave me the ick. and 2. It started to feel a little Hallmark-y towards the end. A little bit like an ABC family special. The way things wrapped up felt a little bit too tight with a bow. It might be how people want it, but after a book that was so full of authenticity and tension and grief, it didn't feel true.

Three estranged sisters are torn apart by the death of one of their own. As their lives reconnect, old grudges come alive while each deals with their grief in sometimes less than healthy ways.

The author did a good job of painting a melancholic picture of the emotional reaction to an unexpected death. I liked the periodic flashbacks. They helped to explain each sister’s respective personality traits and how those affected their childhood relationships. In the end it was obvious that the sisterly bond, while fragmented, was still strong and unbreakable. It’s a messy, tender and heartwarming read.

I like this author and look forward to reading more of her work. Thanks so much to Random House and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I've never heard of this author and I have no idea how she stayed off my radar for so long. Coco Mellors said in an interview "You have to be present" when you're writing. I just fell in love with her descriptive and honest writing. She reminds me of when I read La casa de Bernarda Alba. The complexity and , sometimes toxic, exchange of family dynamics. She has a beautiful way of bringing you into the story and making you a part of the narrative. Stunning work. I'm such a fan!

I never finished Cleopatra and Frankenstein, just gave out about 30 pages into it. I’d bought it hardcover, new, excited to hop on the BookTok train of fandom. But it just…fell flat. When I saw Coco Mellors' new book on NetGalley, I eagerly requested it to give her another go, as I was certain I’d never pick back up what I’d put down on that first try. I needed a whole new narrative and a fresh start to judge her fairly.
Her sophomore novel follows the three Blue sisters, all grieving their youngest fourth sister, Nicole, in markedly different ways. The eldest, Avery, is a former addict, turned workaholic, practicing law in London and living in a fancy house with her patient wife. Next in line Bonnie was a pro-wrestler before Nicky’s death, but she absconded to LA, working as a nightclub bouncer after her trainer threw in the towel (literally) at her last match. And Lucky Blue (just like that model with the German wife on TikTok who makes homemade yogurt, homemade bread, and homemade granola without perspiring a single drop) is a model struggling to maintain or lose her partying lifestyle.
Unfortunately, I found this book just as unreadable as her debut, except I did read this whole thing. The first thing that makes this book so cumbersome is its long chapters with changing perspectives. We rotate among the lives of the sisters beginning on the first anniversary of Nicky’s death, viewing the fallout of their grief or their avoidance of it. Each one is lengthy, clocking in around 50 minutes of reading time for each one, and absolutely bland. Which brings me to my next point: books revolving around death are not inherently interesting or dramatic just because they include something that typically evokes emotion in our own lives. I found Mellors’ writing boring and almost meaningless, the plot contrived, and the characters mere caricatures of people.
To continue on this, I found their family dynamic so ridiculous, primarily because Mellors didn’t really address the parents of these four girls directly for most of the novel. There’s a lot of vagueness and odd avoidance coming from the mother, who was always absent and seemed detached from them even when she was around. When she does enter the story, the section feels odd and disconnected from the rest of the novel, as though she was thrown in there to provide more roundness to the narrative but is failing to fulfill her purpose. I wished that we’d seen more from her in all the girls’ perspectives to contextualize her behavior more, as some of the things she said surprised me, not in a plot twist way, but in an inconsistent way.
The thing that confused me the most about this novel is it is less about a family or sisterhood at all and more about addiction, the different ways that it can manifest. I know this because the book told me so in plain terms, hitting me over the head with the idea multiple times. Each of the sisters is supposedly addicted to something different (not really) and goes about handling this addiction in different ways (also not really true). What I can say is that it did make me think about the dearth of options for substance use recovery programs. There’s basically just AA or nothing. As a nonreligious person, I’ve found this troubling: why do we force vulnerable people to stake their future on a higher power in order to save their own lives? Surely there’s something else that makes life worth living (though I’d kindly request you not ask me what). But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Alcoholics Anonymous is integral to pretty much every fancy rehabilitation program, and the local meetings are also the only one that many people can afford.
Back to the book itself, I found it generally unmemorable and I would not recommend. I didn’t hate it, but I would hate to see so many people spend so many hours reading it when I think it's just meh. Like AA, its popularity is confusing and I wish there was a better alternative on offer. Rounding up to 3 stars from 2.5 because it feels like the right thing to do.

I love the Blue Sisters and I want to scream it from the rooftops! Mellors painted such a realistic picture of grief, sisterhood, and what it really means to be family.

I somehow missed Cleopatra and Frankenstein when it first came out, but now I’m grateful for the excuse to read more of Mellors’ work!

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for the ARC!