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This review of ‘The Second Summer of the Sisterhood’ by Ann Brashares is brought to you by bullet points – because sometimes the weather is just too hot for proper paragraphs. There are a couple of spoilers in the ‘I’m not so crazy about’ section, so please be mindful of that.Last year I decided I’d try a few modern ‘classic’ YA novels (oh how little I knew), so I picked up ‘The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants’ and ‘Nick and Norah’s Ultimate Playlist’. These two books are responsible me actually reading the YA novels you’ve seen reviewed here. Book blogs supplied the recommendations but if the first two YA books I read had been horrible I probably wouldn’t have tried out the books they talked about.
I thought ‘Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants’ was a bit too much of an issues book and oh my, was there some brand placement shorthand, but I loved the girls and their relationships with parents, boys, friends and each other. I also enjoyed the little snippets of handwritten letters and messenger chat, which could have seemed gimmicky but when used in short bursts actually livened up the text.
So I put the sequel ‘The Second Summer of the Sisterhood’ on my Bookmooch wishlist, hooked a copy but needed to wait a few months before it could be sent on. It arrived two weeks ago and while I swore I’d wait until I’d finished a few more challenge reads it somehow snuck its way into my work page and got devoured in my lunch break. In this installment Lena and Carmen are staying close to home over the summer, while Bridget travels to meet the grandmother her dad hates and Tibby spends her summer at some sort of college induction (I’m still not quite sure what that was). Carmen’s mom has a new boyfriend, Lena has a job at a beige shop and can’t stop thinking about her summer love, Kostas and all the girls are sure to learn something this summer. The magical pants (get your mind out of the gutter Brits, we’re in America now) are swapped back and forth between them, until they all meet again.
Here’s what I liked:
I still can’t pinpoint a favorite character from the four main girls. I started out thinking I wasn’t as bothered about Bridget and Tibby’s storylines as I was in the last book, but half way through I changed my mind and decided Lena was the weak link. By the end of the book I was interested in all of them and reasonably excited about the third book.
The girls still aren’t saints. We see Carmen and Tibby’s bratty sides and Lena isolates herself from her mother. Strange as it sounds I enjoyed Carmen’s brattiness. In the first book her anger at her father was largely justified, this time she’s scared and she lashes out in a mean way. It’s nice to see a contrast, sometimes people are bad to their parents for no reason and then sometimes they have good reasons.
This felt like less of an issues book. The girls were each dealing with a specific issue (grief, feelings of abandonment etc) but they were integrated into the book better than they were in the first book. It didn’t feel (as it did in the last book) like each girl was created to showcase a particular big issue (abandonment, cancer and sex, oh my).
The girl’s intensity of feeling is cool – everything matters, everything is make or break and they need to fully experience everything that happens to them. Lena and Bridget have to make big, scary leaps to be able to do this. Some readers might find this aspect a bit over the top, personally I love the intensity sometimes.
The Septembers! How could I not want to know more about the four women who raised the Sisterhood?
Things I’m not so crazy about:
There was a lot less brand placement this time but it was still there, most noticeably Tibby doesn’t get a computer, she gets an iBook. In the first book using brands was a form of convenient shorthand for some character’s personalities or appearances, which I didn’t like but I could understand. This time it felt like brands didn’t even add to the author’s descriptions of characters, they were just pointless insertions.
I’m still ambivalent about Ann Brashares treatment of teenage sex. In the first book Bridget sleeps with an older man and breaks down because she’s not ready to deal with the emotions that come with sex. I can understand the inclusion of this idea, because while sex isn’t always about emotional connection it’s important to explain to teenage girls that sex can come with confusing, upsetting emotions. I was looking for a balancing, positive portrayal of sex in the sequel and for a while it seemed as if Kostas and Lena would provide this. Then when Lena’s almost ready to have sex we find out that Kostas got a girl pregnant after sleeping with her once and will marry her. Great dramatic moment, strong message about sex having consequences but where’s the balancing view – can anyone tell me if it’s coming in later books?
The potential romance between Paul and Lena. I like it better than when I thought we were headed for a not really but a bit incestuous relationship between him and Carmen, but I’m not sure I’m going to enjoy Lena and Paul getting together.
Ok so the big question – if you’ve seen the film of the first book do you recommend it? It has Rory in it, could it really be bad?
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