Can we talk about the cover first? Briefly? Because I hate it. My galley has the same cover, essentially, but with the colors inverted, and the title under the tree and Brashares' name over it rather than the other way around, but whichever they ended up with it's essentially the same. And it's boring. It looks like a boring adult book, and it lacks the punch of the pants from the older Sisterhood series, and the bright colors, and the oomph. Nothing about this says "pick me up! now!" to me.
And honestly, after finishing the book, I feel the same way about it: it lacks the punch of the older series, and the oomph. This book is trying too hard to be Sisterhood 2: Electric Boogaloo. If this had been just a tween novel, I might have felt differently, but you slap "the sisterhood grows" on a cover and I'm going to expect it to be a continuation of sorts of the Pants books and it just isn't. And it is impossible for me to review it as a standalone book; I feel it has to be reviewed as a continuation of sorts of the Pants books because that is what it is billed as. So what you should also know is that I loved the Pants books. I didn't think they were perfect, and I was glad when they stopped at four because it was time for them to stop, but I loved Tibby and Bridget and Lena and Carmen. I loved them, and they didn't need to be a part of this book.
Here we're following three girls, Polly, Jo and Ama, who have been friends since the first day of third grade. Now it's the last day of eighth grade, and, as we learn in the first two pages, the friendship just isn't the same anymore. This theme is continued throughout the book as the three girls have very separate summer experiences: not-unattractive but certainly not model-material Polly gets it into her head to try and become a model, hoping to forge a connection with a grandmother she never knew; Jo is spending the summer at her family's beach house, which is filled with memories of her late brother; Ama had planned to go to an academic camp but was assigned to an outdoorsy one instead and is having, to say the least, a horrible time. There is very little interaction between the three girls as they experience the highs and lows of their last summer before high school, and over and over again one or another laments the loss of the friendship.
The problem? I don't care. I don't care because I don't know these girls. I didn't get a whole book to watch them mailing pants back and forth and sharing their lives. I got some flashbacks sprinkled within the book to tell me how close they once were, how much the friendships meant - but I opened the book not knowing these girls and immediately got told that their friendships were fading away. Why should I care? And I didn't.
We get the first (and major) attempt to join this book to the Pants series at the beginning of chapter 3:
AMA
We first heard of the Sisterhood in sixth grade. You've probably never heard of them, but they became, like, a legend around here. They were four girls who went to our local high school and they shared a pair of jeans that were supposed to be, like, magical. The jeans fit all four of them, and the girls passed them around and decorated them and wrote all over them...By now the Sisterhood has graduated and gone to college, but people still talk about them. They don't even seem real to me anymore. More like a story. ...
Ama goes on to explain that a lot of groups of girls at school (including hers) tried to share pants, but it didn't work, and that she and Polly and Jo also tried sharing a denim skirt, a jean jacket and a scarf, none of which worked either.
POLLY
Maybe we tried to hard to be like the Sisterhood because it was easy for them and we wanted it to be easy for us. Because they were lucky and we wanted to be lucky too. They had wonder, and we didn't have any.
We looked for the magic, but we didn't find it. We waited for the magic, but it didn't find us.
And I just don't buy it. All of a sudden now the Sisterhood is so well-known at their old school that they've essentially become a type of urban legend? The school is packed with Sisterhood imitators?
Further attempts at connection between the old Sisterhood and the "new" are made by having Polly babysit for Tibby's younger siblings (and, at one point, encounter Brian) and by having Jo waitress with (and get into some trouble with) Lena's younger sister Effie. Jo also once had Bridget as a coach at soccer camp.
But the story doesn't NEED these connections, and is the weaker for them because they feel forced and awkward. The framing story doesn't work, either - the day the three girls meet, in third grade, they are given willow tree cuttings in pots. None of them are picked up and they end up walking home together, which is how they become friends. Once the cuttings start to grow, one of them suggests that they plant the trees together somewhere, and they do. They often visit the trees but of course by the book's opening the visits have fallen off, like the friendships; at the end of the book (you might see this as a spoiler, but it's pretty easy to predict) when the three revisit the trees they see that of course they have grown big and tall and intertwined.
The symbol of the trees is, like the connection to the first Sisterhood, forced.
I liked Polly and Jo and Ama. Each of their stories has something interesting and valuable to say - Polly's deals with self-worth and parental relationships and denial and timidity; Jo's with grief and denying your true self and the beginning of romantic relationships and developing responsibility; Ama's with growing out of your comfort zone and facing your fears. The girls are distinct and flawed and smart and stupid and funny and believable, and writing a book about them was a good idea. Trying to link them to the Sisterhood? Not so much. It just doesn't work, and it doesn't need to work. These girls don't need the Pants. They don't need the trees, either.
These girls are good enough for their own world, without the Sisterhood, and tying them to the Sisterhood weakens their stories. I wish I'd gotten a chance to get to know them without first having to compare them to Bridget, Tibby, Carmen and Lena.
