If you’re lucky enough to have a sister, you know that the bond you share is unlike any other. To celebrate National Sisters Day this Aug. 4, we put together a list of books that examine this unique and special (though sometimes painful) relationship.
When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar
Three siblings are left to raise one another after their parents die. The youngest, Kausar, grapples with the incomprehensible loss as she also charts out her own understanding of gender; Aisha, the middle sister, desperately tries to hold on to her sense of family in an impossible situation; and Noreen, the eldest, does her best in the role of sister-mother while also trying to create a life for herself.
The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo
Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s,and by 2016, they have four radically different daughters, each in a state of unrest. Wendy, widowed young, soothes herself with booze and younger men; Violet, a litigator turned stay-at-home-mom, battles anxiety and self-doubt; Liza, a neurotic and newly tenured professor, finds herself pregnant by a man she’s not sure she loves; and Grace, the dawdling youngest daughter, begins living a lie that no one in her family even suspects. As they grapple with years marred by adolescent angst, infidelity, and resentment, they also find the transcendent moments of joy that make everything worthwhile.
The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray
The Butler family has had their share of trials — as sisters Althea, Viola, and Lillian can attest — but nothing prepared them for the literal trial that will upend their lives. Althea, the eldest sister and substitute matriarch, is a force to be reckoned with and her younger sisters have alternately appreciated and chafed at her strong will. They are stunned when she and her husband are arrested, and in a heartbeat the family goes from one of the most respected in town to utter disgrace. As Althea awaits her fate, Lillian and Viola must come together in the house they grew up in to care for their sister’s teenage daughters.
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined.
Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi
Jayne and June Baek are nothing alike. June’s three years older, a know-it-all narc with a finance job and an equally soulless apartment (according to Jayne). Jayne is an emotionally stunted, self-obsessed basket case who lives in squalor, has egregious taste in men, and needs to get to class and stop wasting Mom and Dad’s money (if you ask June). Once thick as thieves, these sisters who moved from Seoul to San Antonio to New York together now don’t want anything to do with each other. Until June gets cancer. And Jayne becomes the only one who can help her.
You Have a Match by Emma Lord
When Abby signs up for a DNA service, it’s mainly to give her friend and secret love interest, Leo, a nudge. After all, she knows who she is already: Avid photographer. Injury-prone tree climber. Best friend to Leo and Connie. But when the DNA service reveals Abby has a secret sister, shimmery-haired Instagram star Savannah Tully, it’s hard to believe they’re from the same planet, never mind the same parents. The logical course of action? Meet up at summer camp and figure out why Abby’s parents gave Savvy up for adoption. But there are complications: Savvy is a rigid rule-follower and total narc. Leo is the camp’s co-chef, putting Abby’s growing feelings for him on blast. And her parents have a secret that threatens to unravel everything.
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, so when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano in college, it’s as if the world has lit up. Julia and her three sisters are inseparable: Sylvie, the family’s dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book; Cecelia is a free-spirited artist; and Emeline patiently takes care of them all. With the Padavanos, William experiences a newfound contentment. But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters’ unshakeable devotion to one another.
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby, she ignores her sister Elinor’s warning that her impulsive behavior leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment. Through their parallel experience of love — and its threatened loss — the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.
Lulu and Milagro’s Search for Clarity by Angela Velez
Overachiever Luz “Lulu” Zavala has a solid ten-year plan. First up: nail her interview for a dream internship at Stanford. The only flaw in her plan is Clara, her oldest sister, who went to college and sparked a fight with their overprotective Peruvian mom, who is now convinced that out-of-state-college will destroy their family. Middle sister Milagro wants nothing to do with college or a nerdy class field trip. Then a spot opens up on the trip just as her own spring break plans (Operation Don’t Die a Virgin) are thwarted, and she hops on the bus. But the trip opens her eyes about possibilities she’d never imagined for herself. On a journey from Baltimore all the way to San Francisco, Lulu and Milagro will become begrudging partners as they unpack weighty family expectations, uncover Clara’s secrets, and maybe even discover the true meaning of sisterhood.
Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. As children, Gillian and Sally were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape. One will do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they share will bring them back.
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Korede’s sister Ayoola is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola’s third boyfriend in a row is dead, stabbed through the heart with Ayoola’s knife.
Korede’s practicality is the sisters’ saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood, the best way to move a body, and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures to Instagram when she should be mourning her “missing” boyfriend. Korede has long been in love with a kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where she works. But when he asks Korede for Ayoola’s phone number, she must reckon with what her sister has become.
Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
In a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, James Witherspoon is caught between his two families — the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode.
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
In a quiet suburb of Detroit, the five Lisbon sisters — beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the neighborhood boys — commit suicide one by one over the course of a single year. As the boys observe them from afar, transfixed, they piece together the mystery of the family’s fatal melancholy, in this hypnotic and unforgettable novel of adolescent love, disquiet, and death.
In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
In 1960, three beautiful sisters were found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a cliff in the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s dictatorship. It doesn’t have to. Everybody knows of Las Mariposas–the Butterflies. In this extraordinary novel, the voices of all four sisters — Minerva, Patria, María Teresa, and the survivor, Dedé — speak across the decades to tell their own stories, from secret crushes to gunrunning, and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo’s rule.
Jennifer Vance is a publicist at Books Forward, an author publicity and book marketing firm committed to promoting voices from a diverse variety of communities. From book reviews and author events, to social media and digital marketing, we help authors find success and connect with readers.
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