Happy November! This month has had some ups and downs. Downs in the general sense of the world. Ups in having time this month to do things I enjoy and also celebrating my 30th birthday! In a reading sense, it has been an alright month. I’m up to 60 books read this year, woohoo! Moving on to this month’s book, I’m reviewing Coco Mellors latest novel, Blue Sisters. And to accompany this month’s review, I made a Blue Wave cocktail.
Blue Wave Recipe
Quick note before getting into the ingredients this month about my special ingredient. This month I did not add a special ingredient, and instead removed an ingredient. Since this novel focuses heavily on addiction and recovery, I decided to make a mocktail to highlight and respect those themes. Also, my dad typically reads my blog so shout out to him for 36 years sober this year! So with that being said, here is the recipe:
0.5oz Blue Curaçao Syrup
3oz Pineapple Juice
1.75oz Lime Juice
0.75oz Simple Syrup
1 splash Soda
In a shaker with ice, add all ingredients excluding soda and shake. Strain into an ice-filled hurricane glass. Top with soda, garnish, and enjoy.
*If you’d like to make the original cocktail, use regular blue curaçao instead of syrup, remove the soda, and add 1oz gin and 1oz white rum. You could also use non-alcoholic gin and rum instead of soda in the mocktail, but I wanted an easier and more cost-effective option. However, I did buy the blue curaçao syrup from Amazon as it’s harder to substitute.
This drink is pretty good! My main notes are that it’s quite sweet and is pretty heavy on the pineapple. I imagine the cocktail version is probably a bit more nuanced with the juniper from the gin and the sweet, fruity flavour of the rum. However, I still thoroughly enjoyed it. But if you’re not a sweet drink person, then this one probably isn’t for you. On the other hand, if you like pineapple and are looking for a fun, funky drink then I’d highly recommend trying this one out!
Blue Sisters Synopsis
(from book cover)
The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. 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 following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left the family reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.
But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize that the greatest secrets they’ve been keeping might not have been from one another but from themselves.
Review
“As long as you are alive, it is never too late to be found.”
I chose Blue Sisters because of the notions of sisterhood mentioned in the blurb, especially because, like in the story, I am one of four sisters. But this one ended up hitting home a bit too hard for me in a lot of ways. The main being that the second to youngest of the sisters has died and the others are processing their grief. Of my four sisters, I am the second to youngest. She was a teacher, I went to school to be a teacher. You see the connections. Due to all of that, I felt a lot emotions reading this novel, which helps it get a higher rating from me. However, I also had quite a few issues, so let’s get into it.
As I’ve already mentioned, this novel is about three sisters in the aftermath of their fourth sister’s death. Similar to another novel I reviewed this year, Hello Beautiful, it’s hard to not draw the comparison to Little Women. But while Hello Beautiful was marketed as a retelling, I haven’t really seen anything to acknowledge that this one is drawing from Little Women in the marketing or in reviews. Likely because it’s showing what happens after the death rather than the lead up to it, although it does show that in some flashbacks. As I mentioned above, the emotions that the siblings drew out of me were probably my top reasons for liking this novel.
Unfortunately, beyond that I do not have many positive things to say. So before moving into the negatives, I’ll mention the things I liked about Blue Sisters. My main positive is that the writing was beautiful. Mellors does a wonderful job describing difficult emotions and internal dialogues. The traditional dialogue is also quite good, but there are times when it felt forced, stilted, and awkward. My second positive is with the themes of the novel. I felt that the topics of generational trauma, addiction, and grief were handled realistically and respectfully. And I appreciate that the author dove into her own past with addiction for this story. I also liked the hard look the novel took at family dynamics and how it acknowledged that we only see from our own point of view and that that isn’t always the perfect truth.
Ok, it’s time to get into the rest of what I have to say. And warning now, this will be a bit ranty at times, so buckle in it’s gonna be a long one. Also it does include a minor spoiler (I’ve put a disclaimer on the paragraph), so read at your own discretion.
First and foremost, and this is a very niche criticism, was the decision to mention pole dancing. If you’re new to the blog, you may not know that I am a professional pole dancer with 11 years experience, so I am especially capable of handling this topic. For some unknown and completely meaningless reason, Mellors had a side character (who we never see again) mention their time as a male stripper and pole dancer. Had she left it at that, I wouldn’t have cared. But unfortunately for us both, she chose to have this character make a throw away comment about pole dancing killing your nerve endings. And as anyone with the ability to google or who has any notion of how the nervous system works knows, this is not true.
Now I know this isn’t a big deal to most other people. But this archaic way of thinking about pole dancing actually has a really negative impact on the culture. Also the book has nothing to do with pole dancing and it’s never mentioned again, so obviously the author heard this incorrect anecdote somewhere and figured she’d put it in her novel to add some depth to her “research”, which is just frustrating. But the biggest issue with this outside of my own personal problems, is that it then had me as a reader questioning all her research and whether other parts of the novel were going to be accurate or misrepresented. Especially in regard to the abundance of discussion on boxing. However, based on the acknowledgement to her boxing trainer I will hope that the information on this subject is correct.
*Minor spoiler in this paragraph* Moving on from that rant, my next issue with Blue Sisters is the positive approach she took to what I consider an inappropriate relationship. Bonnie falls in love with a man she met when she was 15 years old and he was 28 who she repeatedly mentions is like a father figure to her and who trained her privately for years… And somehow no one in the novel thinks this is an issue?! Sure, when she realizes her feelings she’s an adult. But no. This is grooming and never should you want to be with a man who acts as a second father to you most of your life. I also hated that she only started to feel whole and like the most authentic version of herself once she was with a man.
My next biggest criticism is with the sisters. They are extremely stereotypical oldest, middle, and youngest siblings. And, as one of many sisters, it’s just not that cut and dry. And yes, the sisters do have more depth than just the stereotypes, but their overarching traits weren’t overly unique. Also, of course the one that died had a smile that could light up the room and was the light that brought everyone together in their dark family. That just sounds like every true crime show ever. I just didn’t find any of the characters to be ones that I’ll remember after reading the book.
On this same note, the sibling interactions didn’t feel real to me. They consistently talk about how much they love each other, but they never show that. The most realistic sisterhood moments, in my opinion, were when they decided to move a fridge that was left on the street and when they all sat on the bathroom floor and discussed their feelings after a fight. Other than that, they seemed totally out of touch with each other. And I know they were technically out of touch in that they don’t speak often, but I don’t talk to my sisters every single day and we are still obviously sisters. We have similar personalities, mannerisms, thoughts, ways of speaking, everything. And that’s with MUCH larger age gaps, different moms, and most of us not living in the same house, let alone the same room, our whole lives.
So, they honestly just didn’t feel like sisters to me. And especially with the constant insistence that their sisters are PART OF THEM, to have nothing in common wasn’t believable. And also not being able to be in a room without fighting is too much. Yes siblings fight and can say mean things to each other sometimes, but not literally anytime they’re together. This could be impacted by their struggles with addiction and mental health, but it felt more like angsty miscommunication to me most the time. And maybe I’m just lucky to have the best sisters ever, but the level of toxicity was wild to me.
I swear I’m almost done. My last few negative comments on Blue Sisters are short, so I’ll just rattle them off. First, it was slightly lacking in the diversity and representation. I think the LGBTQIA+ representation was done well, but the minimal people of colour was noticeable though not terrible. Next, the chapters were long and because of the character-driven story it did get a bit boring and slow at times. Not in a way that really bothered me, but I thought I would mention it. And finally, the epilogue was unnecessary and I, personally, just didn’t care for it.
Ok rant over. I know based on my comments it seems like I hated Blue Sisters. But I honestly didn’t. Yes I found the sisters to be self-sabotaging, angsty stereotypes, but I liked that they were solid representations of the themes in the novel. The themes of generational trauma, addiction, grief, and family dynamics were on full display in the sisters behaviours and dialogue. And while I sometimes didn’t find their relationship believable, I did find their individual characters to have more believability. Despite the stereotypes they portrayed, they had depth and were well fleshed out.
All in all, this one’s a mixed bag for me. I found the novel handled the themes it was focused on very well and in a realistic way. But while I found the writing beautiful, I had a lot of issues with Blue Sisters as a whole. Granted none of these were HUGE problems, they are just things that I, subjectively, took issue with. However, Mellors did get a lot of tears out of me with this one, so that’s something. But I honestly don’t know if that was from the writing or if that was from me thinking about my own sisters. So, if you’re looking for a character-driven look at grief and addiction then this one’s definitely for you. If not, then maybe skip this one. But I definitely recommend trying the mocktail (or cocktail) if you’re interested!
My Rating:
Thanks for reading! And, if you read the book or try the cocktail let me know in a comment or on Instagram. Also, if you haven’t yet read my previous reviews, I recommend reading Hello Beautiful and Tom Lake if you liked this one!
Teghann
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