Sisterhood Everlasting

Sisterhood Everlasting, by Ann Brashares.

Once upon a time there were four pregnant women who met in an aerobics gym. I'm not joking; that's how this story begins. These large, fit, sweatband-sporting women bore four daughters, all born in and around the month of September. These girls started out as babies together and grew to be girls and then women. A sisterhood, if you will.

As I look back on them - on us - I realize that though we aren't related by blood, we are like four siblings.

This is the culmination to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, and it checks in on the four girls when they are 29. Carmen is engaged to Jones and is getting to be a well-known actress. Tibby has moved to Australia with her boyfriend Brian, and Bee lives in California with her boyfriend, Eric, as well. Lena lives in Providence and has an on-again, off-again relationship with a man who works at a sandwich shop. They all keep in touch but they haven't seen each other in a while, until Tibby sends them all airplane tickets to Santorini (Greece), where they met up over ten years ago.

Something sad and shocking happens after about the first third of the book, and at first I was angry at the author for putting in this twist, but gradually I grew to accept it, and it defined the rest of the novel. I enjoyed the other Pants books, as well as the two movies based on them, and this provides a fitting ending to their story, although I actually wouldn't mind seeing even more stories about them in the future.

4 stars out of 5.