"Sisterhood Everlasting" by Ann Brashares

From Goodreads: "From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ann Brashares comes the welcome return of the characters whose friendship became a touchstone for a generation. Now Tibby, Lena, Carmen, and Bridget have grown up, starting their lives on their own. And though the jeans they shared are long gone, the sisterhood is everlasting.

Despite having jobs and men that they love, each knows that something is missing: the closeness that once sustained them. Carmen is a successful actress in New York, engaged to be married, but misses her friends. Lena finds solace in her art, teaching in Rhode Island, but still thinks of Kostos and the road she didn’t take. Bridget lives with her longtime boyfriend, Eric, in San Francisco, and though a part of her wants to settle down, a bigger part can’t seem to shed her old restlessness.

Then Tibby reaches out to bridge the distance, sending the others plane tickets for a reunion that they all breathlessly await. And indeed, it will change their lives forever—but in ways that none of them could ever have expected.

As moving and life-changing as an encounter with long-lost best friends, Sisterhood Everlasting is a powerful story about growing up, losing your way, and finding the courage to create a new one."

Ann Brashares' "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" series was one of few that epitomized my childhood- I seriously cannot recall the number of times I read and reread these books as a youngin' (enough times that my copies spines completely split down the middle and had to be taped back together). I think that why I liked these books so much at the time was because everything about them was so realistic, from the flawed characters, to the everyday problems the characters encountered, and whatnot- Tibby, Lena, Bee, and Carmen were truly some of my best friends. However, it has been a number of years since I last read these books- one of the main reasons being that I can no longer connect to the characters as I once had (now being a technical adult *gulp* at a totally different point in my life than the characters). Therefore, you can imagine my delight when I had heard that Ann had written this book, a companion novel to her "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" series, where the girls (like their original fans) were now adults.

While I am sure that some readers of this book were ecstatic to find, that in the beginning of the novel, the girls were entirely true to their earlier selves, I must admit that I found it to be quite frustrating and tiresome- primarily because I felt that the girls had accomplished very little and learned anything since we had last seen them- ten years earlier. I mean, Bee was still her crazy-afraid-of-commitment-self, floating through life, Lena was still the struggling artist and still hung up on Kostos, Carmen still didn't have the balls to take charge for her own life and Tibby? Well, she was still her enigmatic/ on-the-fringe self. But perhaps worst of all, each was extremely depressed that their friendship was basically non-existent (not bothering to do anything to rectify the problem). I don't think that I have ever wanted to shake some sense into a character so hard than I did these girls. That being said, I did find the latter half of the novel to be much more enjoyable than the beginning of the novel primarily because the girls actually learned something and grew up! 

All in all, while I did come to like the book I am still on the fence as to whether or not I feel that it was all that necessary (like the epilogue of the "Harry Potter" series)- I feel that in some instances the lives that you imagine for the characters outside of a series is actually more satisfying than where the author decides to take them (at a later date). 

Rating: 4/5