Julie's Review: The Weird Sisters

Summary: Three sisters have returned to their childhood home, reuniting the eccentric Andreas family. Here, books are a passion (there is no problem a library card can't solve) and TV is something other people watch. Their father-a professor of Shakespeare who speaks almost exclusively in verse-named them after the Bard's heroines. It's a lot to live up to. The sisters have a hard time communicating with their parents and their lovers, but especially with one another. What can the shy homebody eldest sister, the fast-living middle child, and the bohemian youngest sibling have in common? Only that none has found life to be what was expected; and now, faced with their parents' frailty and their own personal disappointments, not even a book can solve what ails them... ~amazon.com

Review: OK, I'll admit it.  The last time I read Shakespeare was in high school but that doesn't mean I don't want to read him; I would just prefer to do so in an academic setting. So, when I heard that there was this fabulous book out called,  The Weird Sisters and the Bard woven into it, I was intrigued. I had it on my wish list for months but with all the other books staring at me, I patiently waited. I'm so glad that I read it now.
I loved it! I loved the relationship or non-relationship between the three sisters: Rose, Bean and Cordy. It was as if they all existed to each other but none of them knew each other, let alone had any grasp of who they were without being tied to their name and their birth order.  I always look for character growth when reading a character driven book and Ms. Brown succeeded resoundingly. What I liked is that they found out who they were without changing the essence of who they already had become. They learned how to be themselves without each other; they came into their own.

Ms. Brown wrote each sister so that as a reader you identified with each at various point throughout the book. At different points in the novel you want to shake or smack one of them for their behavior or sometimes lack of behavior. The two sisters who really truly came into their own were Rose and Cordy. Bean still has a little bit of a ways to go before she feels comfortable with who she is and what she's doing. Their parents play an important part in who they are, but don't they in all of us?

Sometimes when you love a book and it touched you emotionally, it's hard to write a review because you don't want to go all "fan girl" over it. This is how I am with The Weird Sisters. It is such a wonderful novel full of family drama, Shakespeare quotes and beautifully written passages. Too many to sit here and quote.

Thanks to Penguin Books USA  I had a beautiful paperback copy to read. I have to say it is fun doing the Twitter chat about the book as well. Plus the author, Eleanor Brown joins which has enhanced the novel even more.

I will say that I highly recommend this book to anyone. It is about family shapes the perception of ourselves and of those that are the closest to us. That no matter how far we try to escape our family, they are the ones we always come back to. They are the ones who accept us for who we truly are; the good, the bad and the ugly.

Final Take: 5/5