Blue Sisters follows the lives of three sisters - Avery, Bonnie and Lucky- one year after the death of their sister Nicky.
The novel drew me in from the beginning, I love family dramas and was intrigued by the sister’s childhood and dysfunctional parents. Each chapter is told from the point of view of a sister and I found some chapters more interesting than others. I found Bonnie’s chapters the least interesting and Avery’s the most compelling. I didn’t particularly warm to any of the characters and for me the writing didn’t always flow seamlessly. However, overall it’s a well written and insightful novel about grief, love and relationships.
3.5 stars
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.

The Plot: 3.5/5 The Characters: 4/5 The Setting: 4/5 The Writing: 5/5

Thoughts:

Thank you 4th Estate & NetGalley for this advanced readers copy! 🤗🤗

Happy Release day to Blue Sisters!! 🩵

The epilogue was a bitesized insight to Coco Mellors writing for me, and WOW I was impressed.
Avery, Bonnie & Lucky are processing the death of their sister Nicky, and you are read through each sister’s narrative per chapter.

Mellors writing really allows the reader to understand the characters and does a great job of taking you around with them. This is a heartfelt and sensitive story about grief, addition and sibling dynamics.

I really enjoyed this read!

Tropes:

Sisterhood
Grief
Family Drama
Addiction

Pros & Cons:

Pros: pretty cover, incredible writing.

Cons: loooong chapters 🐌

I have found a new favourite!!! If you have sisters this book will hit you extra hard 😭❤️‍🩹

"A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend?"

I am a huge fan of Coco Mellors! There was no doubt that I would love this book too. "Blue Sisters" made me cry and laugh, put me in a crisis, and healed me.

This book is raw yet beautifully captures grief, addictions, and the different coping mechanisms we use to deal with the pain. Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky try to navigate the grief and loss of their sister Nicky's death. They all cope in different ways in different cities. They have been hurting and self-sabotaging for a year when they get an email from their mother telling them she is selling their childhood home (the place where Nicky was living when she died).

I love, love, love Coco's style of writing! The way she uses vivid analogies to describe not only the setting but also the emotions. These characters are not perfect (except Bonnie, in my opinion) and have their faults, but I loved every aspect of them. I understood them at their self-sabotaging times and loved them on their getting-better journey.

"Blue Sisters" is a little hard to review for me. I have a younger sister, and this book made me question what I'd do without her. It's safe to say that this book made me cry a LOT. Being an older sister myself, I connected to Avery a lot. There are so many things elder sisters go through that other people can't see, and reading about Avery made me feel seen.

This is less about grief and more about different addictions, mostly drugs. Watching all of the sisters ruin their own lives in different ways could be interesting if the book managed to make me care.
This is a book trying to humanise privileged young women and showing that you can be rich and successful and also be depressed, as if this wasn’t obvious.
A little detail that irritated me was that it was mentioned that Bonnie found Nicky 4 minutes after she died. How could she know the exact time though? That doesn’t make sense. There are more details that annoyed me like some slight biphobia that made me not enjoy this book for the most part.
And around 60% I actually started to enjoy it to some extent when the characters reached peak self destruction and I actually got interested in how it will turn out.

With similar themes of addiction and mental health to her first novel, Cleopatra and Frankenstein, Blue Sisters follows the lives of – you guessed it – the three remaining Blue sisters as they navigate their very different lives in the year since their fourth sister, Nicky, passed away. With the sisters feeling a quarter each to become ‘whole’, it is no surprise the death of Nicky leaves a gaping chasm in their family dynamic and mental psyches. Each sister, so glaringly different to the others, copes with their grief throughout the course of the novel.

As always, Mellor is a master of characterisation. The wide variety of characters are well-fleshed and, most importantly, realistic. Nobody is perfect and their mistakes and failures make them all the more interesting. Across the novel, the alternating points of views add to the characters stories and each journey is interesting and heart breaking.

I thoroughly enjoyed Blue Sisters and the way it portrayed grief across each of the sisters in similar yet marginally different ways. I recommend this to anyone who loved Mellors first novel - this one definitely maintains the hype!

Thank you 4th estate and Netgalley for the ARC!

<b><i>”As long as you are alive, it is never too late to be found”</i></b>

With <b>Blue Sisters</b> Coco Mellors tells us the journey of three entitled and privilege girls through grief.
It is a testament to Coco’s writing that I still loved the book, despite not being able to relate to the characters for one single bit. Even so, I can appreciate how well the bonds of sisterhood between the sisters were described, and how heavy themes such as addiction were handled with care.

This was a beautifully written and engaging family drama, and I’ll certainly going to come back for more of Coco’s writing.

<i>I would like to 4th Estate | Fourth Estate and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this eARC in exchange for an honest an honest review.</i>

P.S – A huge appreciation to all authors writing about Endometriosis. Let’s not normalize pain.

After reading, and loving, Coco Mellors debut book, ‘Cleopatra and Frankenstein’, last year, ‘Blue Sisters’ was by far one of my most anticipated releases for 2024, and, oh, it did not disappoint.

This book is such an intimate look into sisterhood, grief, addiction, and love. How messy things can become, but how strong those threads of love are, even when everything is falling apart.

We meet our main characters, Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky, one year on from their sister Nicky’s accidental death. They’re all reeling in their own ways - the loss of their sister has knocked them all off balance. After her funeral they had all fled back to their different parts of the world, but due to an array of different circumstances, and their parents wanting to finally sell the family apartment where Nicky had been living up until her untimely death, the sisters find themselves together once more, and having to navigate how to be with each other, without Nicky, while coming to terms with the fallout effect it’s had in their own individual lives.

This book is so incredibly tender. It’s dealing with harsh topics, but doing it with such care, while not shying away from what it’s like to struggle with addiction, the pain of loss, and the way our childhood shapes us (for better or worse).

The very first page of this book explains how a sister is not a friend, saying that comparing the two is like comparing the intertwined strings of a friendship bracelet to the complex biological twirl of an umbilical cord, and I thought that was such a perfect analogy for sisterhood. It isn’t a prettily made thing - but it is strong, and keeps us tied together regardless, throughout the good times and the bad.

We see this throughout the book - the love the sisters have for each other not exempting them from falling out, from saying harsh truths, lashing out, and hurting each other. But they’re still there for each other at the end of the day, and that’s what’s truly important.

This book moved me to tears several times, and after reading the epilogue I just sat with those tears for a while. I believe Mellors has reached what she set out to achieve with this book. It is a beautiful testament to sisterhood.

Go lightly.

Thank you to the publishers, and Netgalley, for the copy to review.

Coco Mellors completely nails the sister dynamics, telling the story of four sisters and their bonds from shared childhood challenges to adult grief. There's nothing quite like loving and losing a sister, and Mellors does a beautiful job of describing the year after one of the sister's dies and all its tragic ramifications for the remaining three.

A very compelling read, complicated characters and touching dynamics.

Another very good book by Coco Mellors.

Even though, once again, I couldn't connect with the characters, I love the way she writes about the dynamics and relationships in the family! The characters were very well written, complex and interesting to read about!

A very good read. Can't wait for the next book !

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the book in exchange for my honest opinion!

Another beautiful novel by Coco Mellors, I'm once again blown away by the way she writes her characters to be so unequivocally flawed yet also real and lovable. I'm a sucker for stories about family and this one really hit, especially with the added dynamic of a passed sibling and healing from grief.

My favourite parts of the book were without a doubt, the sisters' vivid memories of Nicky and the way she shaped each of their lives, and the incredibly believable dialogue (especially when the sisters argued). I felt the same way with "Cleopatra and Frankenstein", where I thought the arguments were so raw and well built-up, I could feel each line puncture a bit of my brain.

Unlike "Cleopatra and Frankenstein" though, where I felt the story and characters were unpredictable, this one felt a bit more cookie-cutter and accessible, in that we were much more focussed on how the sisters resolved their grievances, rather than when/if. There were a few corny bits especially with the epilogue but those didn't detract much from my enjoyment of the novel.

Still an incredible, emotional story and one I would highly recommend to anyone with a soft spot for family!

Holy shit, this book was INCREDIBLE 🤌🏻♥️

It’s clear from the title that this book is about sisters but I can honestly say I was blown away by how rich and impactful Coco’s delve into the true meaning of sisterhood was to read. I have a sister which made it all the more relatable for me.

It’s worth noting that there are very intense and heavy themes throughout the whole book including addiction, drug/alcohol abuse, overdosing, sexual assault and suicide. In my opinion, Coco explored each of these hard-hitting topics with the utmost care and although some moments were difficult to read, they helped bind the story together and to shed light on why the sisters are the way they are. One thing that stayed with me is the spotlight Coco shines on endometriosis - a horrific condition that can be so debilitating for women and is not talked about enough. The awareness that will be brought to it can only be good.

All of the Blue sisters, Avery, Bonnie and Lucky are extremely complex and vibrant, and even fourth sister Nicky, whose traumatic death takes place in a period before the novel starts, is such a compelling character from what you get to learn about her. The sisters were brought to life so beautifully: I am quite a visual reader anyway, but I could picture them all with crystal clear clarity. Usually I end up picking a favourite character while reading but I truly couldn’t choose a favourite out of the Blue sisters, they are all completely different but equally charismatic and real.

Coco has done an unbelievable job at capturing the raw and tender grief that each sister is feeling at the loss of their beloved Nicky, and the coping mechanisms each of them turns to to try and deal with their pain.

This is honestly such a wonderful book and I am going to recommend it to anyone and everyone. It’s possibly my favourite read of the year so far 🥺🩵

Blue Sisters
The Blue Sisters; Avery, Lucky and Bonnie have all reached a crossroads in their lives. Avery, married to her one-time therapist now her wife, Chiti, is trying to come to terms with not wanting children. Chiti wants one and Avery has gone along with it so far. But the ever capable, dependable eldest girl is beginning to question it and her assumed role as surrogate mother to the other two sisters.
Lucky, the youngest, is a successful model but is caught up in a round of partying, sex, drink and drugs and has been sacked by her modelling agency.
Bonnie is now the middle sister which subtly changes her relationship to the other two. She is a boxer who ran away after her last fight to Venice Beach. Bonnie was working as a bouncer in a bar until she had a fight with a drunken customer and fled to New York.
But there is one sister missing and her loss is felt keenly by the others. It’s Nicky who was once the middle daughter. Soon it will be the 4th of July and the first anniversary of her death. And, if they weren’t all trying to deal with it in their own ways, their mother texts them all to let them know that Nicky’s apartment in New York needs to be cleared as she and their father intend to sell it.
And so, the sisters gather in the city to start the sad process of going through and disposing of Nicky’s possessions and mementoes and whatever secrets may rear their head while they struggle with their own personal demons. Nicky’s death was recorded as an overdose as an agonising medical condition left her wracked with pain and reliant on painkillers. The downward spiral began when she unknowingly bought a supply that contained a deadly and addictive substance. It was Bonnie who found her dead in her apartment and, like the sisters, has to acknowledge a collective guilt in knowing that something was seriously wrong with Nicky but not saying anything about it. However, it has come out in different, more subtle ways such as shoplifting, reckless hedonism and an unrequited love.
This isn’t the type of book that I normally read but the cover caught me eye and I really enjoyed it. A story of complex relationships and a depiction of eldest daughter syndrome that I could really relate to. The Spice Girls are referenced several times and you could almost see the sisters as them with their familial roles; Avery as Posh, Lucky as Baby and Bonnie as Sporty. As the book progresses, the sisters dysfunctional family background is revealed as well as their strained relationship with their mother.
Sorting through a close relative’s belongings after their death can bring all sorts of emotions and rivalries to the surface and I thought that this was well written and convincing. The effects of Nicky’s death and the forthcoming anniversary was also a powerful emotional theme. Avery has continued to pay the mortgage on Nicky’s flat almost as if she was still alive.
Avery’s feelings about having to be a quasi-mother as their own mother was so remote and had her time taken up with their father’s drinking are explored and also her increasing desire to no longer have this role thrust upon her. Maybe this is why she doesn’t want to become a mother. The sisters have only had each other to rely on and present a very much united front.
The epilogue at the end when, 10 years later, their final destinies are revealed and they are living lives far more true to themselves, is interesting. They are all in different places that they could not have predicted.
I was drawn in by the writer’s style and intrigued as to what might come from them clearing Nicky’s flat. Would it be a gathering to share memories and mourn or would it be rivalries and recriminations resurface? This is a summer, perhaps a holiday read, and also in many ways a thought provoking one.

A beautifully written story about three sisters, so closely bonded but each with their own complexities, trying to navigate life after the death of their sister, Nicky.
I read Cleopatra & Frankenstein last year and enjoyed it, but I simply adored Blue Sisters. Coco captures sisterhood perfectly, exploring that fine line between love and hate. I particularly enjoyed the discussion around Avery, and how the other girls saw her as having her life so figured out, which was very much not the case - but hard to notice when we're all so focused on ourselves.
This book was a real journey, and the ending just tied everything together so wonderfully.

Another great, well written novel by Coco Mellors. Loved the characters and storyline and will continue to look out for her future offerings. Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for the advance digital copy.

Four sisters all fighting their own addictions, one dies which leaves the remaining three to readjust not just their relationship with each other but their own lives. This book is about many things: grief, familial relationships, addictions but also hope and friendships and love. It’s very well written with a light touch but never shying away from difficult subjects. Each sister is standout and easily identifiable and I felt empathy for each of them in their various struggles. I met four strangers at the start of this book but on completion felt that they were my friends.

Thank you to NetGalley and 4th estate for this ARC.

This is the story of the four Blue sisters: Avery (the gay one) who is a lawyer living in London, Bonnie (the scary one) who is a boxer turned bouncer living in LA, Lucky (the hot one) who is a model living in Paris and Nicky (the dead one) who was a teacher living in New York. They have awful parents (alcoholic father, cold mother) and display a lot of self-destructive behaviour, including but not limited to alcoholism, drug abuse and infidelity. They also constantly fight with each other. Honestly, if you needed a guide book on how to fuck up your life, these people could write it no problem. Lucky's posh drug-fuelled party is so distasteful I skipped a few pages.

I get it, the death of their sister Nicky at 27 from an overdose of pain medication (she suffered from debilitating endometriosis), leaves a hole in their lives they struggle to come to terms with but I simply couldn't connect with these well-to-do women who willingly burn down their lives at every turn while using words like "lycanthropic" and "prurience". Just go have therapy already!

It is well-written literature, but it's not for me. Too much misery and unhappiness in a book, combined with chapters that are ten miles long, makes me lose the will to live.

“Lucky,” said Lucky. “That’s a funny name,” said Flopsy. Lucky gave her a sideways look."

Coco has really drawn the three Blue sisters characters out. I felt they were all individual and well distinguishable which is sometimes difficult with multiple POV stories.

Each character had their flaws, and while I related to one more than the others they all had relatable features. The novel explores grief, addiction and other issues with taste and sensitivity. A great read.

This may be one of the most beautifully written books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. A total one-of-a-kind narrative that warms the heart and comforts the soul.

This novel, Blue Sisters, is a heavily character-driven narrative, in which we meet the three Blue sisters, Avery, Bonnie and Lucky, who all lead very different lives. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, who tragically died and all the sisters are navigating their already turbulent lives among the grief of losing a loved one and finding out their childhood apartment is to soon be sold.

I honestly was mesmerised by how poetically Coco Mellors explored topics in this novel, from addiction to grief. It was written in such an honest and raw way, and I could not help but feel every emotion so deeply when engaging with these characters.

A divine read,

A year after the tragic sudden death of their sister Nicky, Avery, Bonnie and Lucky are still in the midst of their grief. Youngest sister and model Lucky is about to be dropped by her agency for constantly missing shoots due to drugnand drink benders making her unreliable. Ex-boxer, now bouncer Bonnie is still hiding out at a dive bar while also dealing with a terrible fight fall-out. Eldest sister Avery is is now sober and a successful lawyer in London, but are her secrets about ruin her facade?

Following POV's of each sister, this follows them as they find themselves back at their childhood home facing up to having to clear it of Nicky's belongings, and all the issues that brings up. The sisters were each drawn well and I appreciate the need to show each of their stories, I would have loved more chapters of them all together as I really enjoyed the few when they were bouncing off each other like only sisters can, no matter how long they have been apart.

It's been a year since the sudden and tragic death of Nicky Blue, and her three sisters, Avery, Bonnie and Lucky, are still reeling. Lucky, a model, keeps going on drink-and-drugs benders and missing shoots. Bonnie has quit her career as a professional boxer after a disastrous fight. Meanwhile, Avery, sober, married and gainfully employed, seems to have it all together, but her kleptomania would suggest otherwise. Blue Sisters, Coco Mellors's second novel, switches between the perspectives of the three living sisters as they face the prospect of clearing the family apartment and figuring out their lives without Nicky. This is very much a sibling potboiler along the lines of Ann Napolitano's Hello Beautiful or Claire Lombardo's The Most Fun We Ever Had: the arresting cover had made me hope for something more literary. Blue Sisters ticks along nicely enough, but feels clumsy: surely there must be a better way of exploring these sisters and their relationships then letting them each splurge out their backstories in turn? It's interesting that the chapter that felt the most alive to me was the only one when all three sisters are together and shooting accusations at each other, perhaps because it felt like Mellors had finally got her characters on set and actually doing something. It didn't help that the only one of the three who is fully realised is Avery: Bonnie and Lucky sit too neatly in the 'good' and 'hot mess' categories. So having said all this, I was going to rank Blue Sisters lower, but I have to give Mellors some credit for how movingly she conveys the sisters' grief over Nicky, and how she manages to put Nicky on the page even though she never appears in person. The epilogue, set ten years later, also suggests that Mellors is capable of more subtle writing than she demonstrates for much of the novel, as she wisely leaves us to fill in some of the blanks, especially when it comes to Lucky. So yes, if you loved Hello Beautiful, run out and get this one. 3.5 stars.