Why did you have to Break a Perfectly Good Heart?

Ann Brashares "Why did you Have to break a Perfectly Good heart?" as in the words sung by none other than Taylor Swift.  As I'm sitting here watching the movie version of the first Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, I just keep thinking and thinking of how Sisterhood Everlasting ended.

I can't even tell you how many times I cried while reading this book (I know it's embarrassing to admit that probably, but I just couldn't help it.)  This series was very dear to my heart when I first read the first four books, a few years ago.  When I first read the series, it was the summer before my freshmen year in high school.  I had three amazing best friends, and one of us had moved away to Texas shortly before our 8th grade promotion ceremony.  We were all really sad, and to help keep our minds off of one of our best friends leaving us, we found The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series.

My two remaining best friends and I discussed the books bits by bits, every time we finished one.  We loved them.  We even pretended to be the characters.  My friend Millie was Lena (keep in mind we were really young and naive at the time), because she was Jewish (not Greek like Lena), and she looked a little Alexis Bledel did in the movie.  Meagan was Carmen, because she was short and a little chunky like Carmen's character.  And even though I didn't really fit into any of the characters, I just thought of them as my best friends along the way :), my friends insisted I was Bridget, even though the only thing I had in common with her is the fact that we were both blond, but that's where the resemblance and personality similarities stopped!

It's been 7 years since my old friends and I read the series.  I'm only in contact with one of those friends now, due to changes...you know how life gets.  But one thing I will remember sharing with them is those books.  It was such a happy time in my life (not that my life isn't great now! It is!), with such fond memories.  So knowing this information, you can probably imagine how thrilled I was when I found out Ann Brashares had written another book to be added to the series!

Sisterhood Everlasting takes place ten years after the fourth book, Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood.  All girls have grown up, started their own lives, and somehow been split apart due to life taking place.  They're still in contact, but don't get to see or hear from one another as often as they would like.  Carmen has become a TV actress in New York City, whose engaged to a big time executive in the acting business.  Lena has become an art teacher at a University in Providence.  Bridget is still her wild free self, still together with Eric (her original love from the first  and fourth book), moving around from one apartment to another in San Francisco.  And then there is Tibby, who left her three best friends two years earlier to move to Australia with Brian, where he had gotten a huge Computer Software job.

Tibby sends Carmen, Lena, and Bridget each round trip plane tickets to Greece, where they would all four spend 6 days together.  That trip is what changes those best friends lives forever.

This book is filled with tragedy, an unbelievable amount of it.  A lot of other characters we, as readers, grew to love just like Carmen, Lena, Bridget, and Tibby did come back in this story.  There's Eric, Bridget's responsible lawyer boyfriend of more than ten years.  Brian is back, Tibby's boyfriend since pretty much the beginning.  And of course, there's Kostos, the boy who broke Lena's heart a number of times.  We get to see even more of these loving characters.

Telling you what happens isn't even possible, even if I were to just mention something small that is a part of the story, because there is one huge thing that has pretty much everything to do with this story.  And even though it hurt reading this story...I still absolutely loved it.  It was heart wrenching, but in a way that felt so real.  That's what this story is...real.  It deals with things that are out there.  Something I have always loved about this series, is how four best friends could be so close, but with such different personalities.  While Lena is the shy artistic type, Bridget is the free spirited athlete.  Then there is Carmen who loves acting, and has grown up to be so different than the character we loved in the first four books.  She's become a diva...that's probably the best way to put it.  And then Tibby, the out spoken, tells it like it is, film/script writer.

They do have one thing in common though...we love them all!  Even though they have most likely all done one thing that we found annoying (I know I have), but for me, it was that I got so engrossed in these characters that I felt like I was right there with them, watching everything happening in their life...growing-up, living there lives, finding love, starting new things, and then ultimately...death.

I 100% recommend reading this book if you read the other four books.  Even if you didn't like the other books in the series, I still recommend reading this book, because first of all, the characters have changed in many ways, they have grown.  And second, just because you can't read a series, and then not read the last book, it just isn't done... ;).

Overall Rating:

Well that's it from me once again.  Summer is almost over for me, I just have this weekend, and then I start my classes on Monday, but I will of course continue reading.  Up next...I'm not 100% sure, but I think it will be Sara Shepherd's second book in the Lying Game Series, Never Have I Ever.

Thanks,

The Romance Bookie :)