There once were four women who felt like they didn't fit in anywhere. Sylvia has been alone ever since her sister Minnie's death, Cindy works in a lingerie shop and has a deadbeat boyfriend who controls her, Diana has just moved to America with her new husband, and Lise is a professor teaching creative writing courses but really her dream is to publish her own book. Diana decides one day that she wants to meet new people so puts up an ad in a local bookshop for a book club and meets the other three women. They soon become close friends who entwine themselves in each other's lives through thick and thin, through hospital scares, pregnancies, failed marriages and lost jobs. These women will discover once and for all what it is like to really have a sister who cares for you no matter what - even if they are not a blood relative. This was an entertaining, heartwarming read about friendship, aimed at women aged 30-plus. (PP)
The Sisters Club, by Lauren Baratz-Logsted, is about four women who become family to one another. The summary says: "Some families you are born into. Some you choose. And some choose you. Four women have little in common other than where they live and the joyous complications of having sisters. Cindy waits for her own life to begin as she sees her sister going in and out of hospitals. Lise has made the boldest move of her life, even as her sister spends every day putting herself at risk to improve the lives of others. Diana is an ocean apart from her sister, but worries that her marriage is the relationship separated by the most distance. Sylvia has lost her twin sister to breast cancer, a disease that runs in the family, and fears that she will die without having ever really lived. When Diana places an ad in the local newsletter, Cindy, Lise, and Sylvia show up thinking they are joining a book club, but what they discover is something far deeper and more profound than any of them ever imagined." The Sisters Club is in August 2015.