Sisterhood Everlasting by Anne Brashares

Sisterhood Everlasting is a story of four girls we have come to know well over the years. Tibby, Bee, Lena, and Carmen, who’ve dubbed themselves “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”. Now, ten years later, they’re all grown up and are just trying to discover themselves and find out what they want.

Carmen is an actress who is becoming pretty successful in “the business”. She’s engaged to Jones, but she still misses her friends and thinks about them constantly.

Bridget lives in California with Eric, but doesn’t quite want to settle down and get married. She doesn't know what she wants, but she knows it's not that.

Lena paints and teaches, and likes to keep her life as quiet and un-dramatic as possible. She’s content, but not what anyone would consider happy. She finds herself thinking about Kostos and what could have been.

Tibby moved to Australia with Brian unexpectedly, and has been out of touch with them. So unexpectedly, as in they find her empty apartment.

One fateful day, they get a message from Tibby arranging from them to go to Greece. Of course they agree, and Carmen, Bridget, and Lena all find themselves in Greece a week later. Until an unexpected tragedy changes everything for them.

Let me say, that I did NOT see that one coming. It was actually really sad, and I kept waiting for the punch line, like “just kidding everything’s going to be okay”. That didn’t happen though, and I was forced to read on.

The four other books in this series are about these four girls through their high school years, teaching them about loss, love, and friendship. This novel is about them ten years later, basically facing the same things, but in a more adult way.

I love this story, and how it shows the girls who we’ve come to know and love over the years at a later time in their lives. I also like how their lives aren’t perfect, and the storyline isn’t all happy, because it’s easier to understand and appreciate. The girls all have their own problems to deal with and are just trying to figure out how to solve them.

The only negative things I have to say about this book are that if these girls were such “close friends”, how the heck did they let themselves grow so distanced from each other? Also, even though they’re almost 30, it seems that they still have the mind of a teenager, if that makes sense. Carmen is still self-centered (being an actress isn't helping this lol), Bee is still just as restless and doesn't know a good thing when she has it, and Lena is still as quiet and thinks about Kostos more than she wants to admit. Not much has changed right? Almost as if they haven’t embraced their adulthood yet, which I suppose is what this book is about. And last, 3 out of the 4 girls are still have relationships with their high-school sweetheart. Now as terribly romantic as that is, it is very hard to believe!!! Haha :)

I am so jealous of these girls. They have a bond so special and strong. I am sad to say that in my lifetime, I have never a constant close friend in my life. My friends have come and go for various reasons, and I find it unfortunate to say that I don’t have a “sisterhood” with anyone.

The cover… well, not the most interesting. REALLY not the most interesting, but anyway….

I enjoyed this unexpected conclusion to the Sisterhood and would recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed the other books.

I’ll give it a 4 out of 5 stars . :) It's worth it if you’ve read the other ones!