For this issue, I went somewhere new. I left behind flirting, romance and couples and picked up a book that instead taught me about family, grief and sisterhood. Though it is no rom-com, “Blue Sisters” is nonetheless a book about love — a type of love that warms my heart more than most romance novels I have read.
Coco Mellors’ “Blue Sisters” is about the four Blue sisters, as you may have guessed from the title.
Avery, the eldest, appears to have her life completely together. She is a lawyer, almost ten years sober and lives happily with her wife in an affluent neighborhood in London. However, under the surface, she’s extremely self-destructive: She has developed a tendency for kleptomania in high-end stores and tries to light her life on fire in many ways that I will not spoil.
Bonnie, the second-child, is a champion boxer. She is a lion in the ring, fierce with her punches and swift on her feet. Unexpectedly, she is the gentlest of the sisters.
Lucky is the youngest, the baby of the family. She leaves high school early to pursue a career in modeling, which quickly comes to an end. She passes her days in a haze of alcohol and cigarettes, segueing into nights that are a blur of parties, drugs and the same numbing routines.
Last but not least is Nicky, their late sister, who had passed a year earlier. “There is nothing wrong with wanting to be normal,” Nicky often told her sisters. She had been in a sorority in college, later becoming a teacher and dreaming of one day becoming a mother. She had also struggled with chronic endometriosis — stuck in a cycle of pain and reliance on painkillers, her suicide and its landslide of repercussions form the central tension of the novel.
I dove into “Blue Sisters” expecting to feel drawn to one sister. Yet, I found myself resonating with and loving all of them. As I read, I kept asking myself who was becoming my favorite, until I got to the end of the book and realized I never found an answer. Even with their flaws and my frustrations, I felt that I understood each sister.
Lucky and Avery would fight, and instead of picking a side, I would just hope they would make up. Yes, they both were definitely in the wrong at times. But I could also understand why they did what they did. I find it incredibly impressive that Mellors was able to write these three incredibly flawed characters that I couldn’t help but love.
For all their differences, the Blue sisters have one thing in common: They escape. They have run to different corners of the world, all far away from the site of Nicky’s death — Bonnie in LA, Avery in London and Lucky in France. They avoid one another, as each sister is a painful reminder of the one they lost.
This book makes me believe that I will never understand the bond between sisters. I have never cried to my sister while she hugs me. I have never yelled at my sister for stealing my clothes without asking. I have never washed my sister and put her to bed because she was not conscious enough to do so herself. Still, reading this book felt like standing just at the edge of that intimacy. I learned something about this bond and how it holds both tenderness and hurt at the same time.
I would like to say my friendships have let me peek into sisterhood, but as Mellors wrote, “a sister is not a friend.” You choose your friends, while you are part of your sisters from the very beginning. Even when they scatter across countries and try to build separate lives, that bond does not loosen; it stretches beneath the distance like a shared root, invisible yet impossible to sever.
Maybe I could not pick a favorite character because I do not know what it’s like to be any of them. I am surely not a bossy eldest sister who practically raised her younger siblings and sets impossible expectations for them. I am not a stoic middle sister who keeps the peace and sacrifices her own needs to avoid conflict. I am not a chaotic and charismatic youngest sister who treats the world like her playground, often leaving the mess for others to clean up. Yet, I was able to see a piece of myself in each one of them.
I definitely think this book had its cliché moments, but that was not something that bothered me. I believe that in hard times, we need some clichés. I found “Blue Sisters” very heartwarming and sad. Although Nicky dies before the book begins, I shed some tears reading Bonnie, Lucky and Avery recount their memories with her. I loved seeing them learn to navigate life in a new way without Nicky. The Blue sisters had always moved through life as four, but by the end, they were learning how to find balance as three.
Reading “Blue Sisters” reminded me that family is not meant to be easy or perfect. Each sister is flawed, each bond complicated, and yet their love for one another — messy, painful and beautiful — shines through. Even though I do not have sisters of my own, Mellors’ story allowed me to step into their world, to feel the weight of grief, the push and pull of responsibility and the loyalty that holds them together. I think this book is ultimately about understanding the many forms that love can take, and the ways family shapes us, whether we know it or not.
Kassia Zabetakis PZ ’28 loves speeding through romance novels in days, but usually ends up hating them after she’s done.
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