I liked the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series as well as The Three Willows, a book for tweens more than teens. Sisterhood Everlasting is the first adult book I have read by Brashares. And yes, it is an adult book, but it is clearly aimed at all the girls who read about the sisterhood when they were teens and have themselves become twenty-somethings. I am a bit older than that, but can remember my 27-self well. Ann Brashares is not likely to be recognized with a Pulitzer or Nobel, but her books are solidly written, with few to no holes or implausibilities. What she does is make the reader feel what her characters feel, something I am highly susceptible to, so I laughed out loud a few times, garnering odd looks from my boyfriend who does not understanding my immersion in books. and cried some other times. I enjoy finding out what has happened to characters...later. I do not need to be there for every tiny step, but it is satisfying to come back to characters you liked the first time around. This is not a fluffy beach read, but it does still feel like a summer book and it moves quickly and switches from girl to girl...they begin the book together and each appropriately walk their own path until they come back to each other in the end.
I like Brashares because she reminds us about the strength of female friendships, the importance of love, the power of grief, the need for connections and all those other things we know, but need to be told again from time to time. There are no great revelations about life in this novel, but sometimes the comfort of familiar characters just living is exactly what we need.
