The Sometimes Sisters
by Carolyn Brown
Release Date February 27, 2018
A bittersweet inheritance reunites three estranged sisters in a novel of family, trust, and forgiveness from New York Times bestselling author Carolyn Brown.
When they were growing up, Dana, Harper, and Tawny thought of themselves as “sometimes sisters.” They connected only during the summer month they’d all spend at their grandmother’s rustic lakeside resort in north Texas. But secrets started building, and ten years have passed since they’ve all been together—in fact, they’ve rarely spoken, and it broke their grandmother’s heart.
Now she’s gone, leaving Annie’s Place to her granddaughters—twelve cabins, a small house, a café, a convenience store, and a lot of family memories. It’s where Dana, Harper, and Tawny once shared so many good times. They’ve returned, sharing only hidden regrets, a guarded mistrust, and haunting guilt. But now, in this healing summer place, the secrets that once drove them apart could bring them back together—especially when they discover that their grandmother may have been hiding something, too…
To overcome the past and find future happiness, these “sometimes sisters” have one more chance to realize they are always family.
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My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
Granny used to say that the person who stirs the shit pile has to lick the spoon.
He made it in eight minutes and would have arrived there sooner if he hadn’t gotten behind a pokey old woman who didn’t have any place to go and a year to get there.
Did you think it was all rainbows and unicorn farts after you left? The only thing that changed was that I got all the bitchin’ instead of sharin’ it with you.
You can do better… He’s not for you, Aunt Tawny. He’s got a cat and he lives with his mama.
She’d worn a white robe and the preacher said that she was leaving all her sins in the water and would be a new creature when she arose from it. At ten years old, she’d often wondered how the water felt holding the sins of so many people and where it went when the preacher pulled the plug and let it all go. Did it wash into the rivers, where the sin jumped on people as they swam?
She loved the sound of his soft drawl. Maybe she could take him home. He could sit beside her bed and read the phone book to her until she fell asleep.
My Review:
I enjoyed this cleverly paced small-town family drama that was packed with quirky characters, heart-squeezing histories, irreverent homespun wisdom, and amusing observations. Three grieving and desperate women arrived at a small-town Texas lake resort with each hoping for a chance at a fresh start in life. They had previously called themselves sometimes sisters, although they were actually three half-sisters who were only together one month each summer while staying at the rustic lake resort of with their much-loved grandmother, “Granny Annie.” Each was envious of the others but had never looked too deeply as nothing was as it had seemed.
But Granny Annie has just passed away, and the three women must return to run the resort together or get nothing at all, which posed quite the challenge, as they had not been successful in spending more than a few minutes together without an argument breaking out. Each arrived at the resort out of options, out of money, and weighted down with shameful secrets, regrets, and old resentments. Little did they know that Granny Annie had been keeping the biggest secret of them all. My favorite character was not one of the sisters but the elderly cook who had been known to them all their lives as Uncle Zed, I adored him, even if he was the cause of the first ugly cry I’ve sobbed out in years.
About the Author:
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Carolyn Brown was born in Texas and raised in southern Oklahoma. These days she and her husband make their home in Davis, Oklahoma, a small town of less than three thousand people where everyone knows everyone, knows what they are doing and with whom, and read the weekly newspaper to see who got caught.
A plaque hangs on her office wall that says I know the voices are not real but they have such great ideas. That is her motto and muse as she goes through the days with quirky characters in her head, telling their stories, one by one, and loving her job.
She has been married almost half a century to a retired English teacher that she calls Mr. B and he does not read her books before they are published because she cannot afford a divorce. They have three grown children and enough grandchildren to keep them busy and young.
When Carolyn is not writing she likes to sit in the back yard and watch the two tom cats protect the yard from all kinds of wicked varmints like crickets, other cats, spiders and blue jays.
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