Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters

Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters
by Natalie Standiford

The Sullivan sisters have a big problem. On Christmas Day their rich and imperious grandmother gathers the family and announces that she will soon die . . .and has cut the entire family out of her will. Since she is the source of almost all their income, this means they will soon be penniless.

Someone in the family has offended her deeply. If that person comes forward with a confession of her (or his) crime, submitted in writing to her lawyer by New Year's Day, she will reinstate the family in her will. Or at least consider it.

And so the confessions begin....
(description taken from Amazon.com)

I really loved the premise for this book. The idea of three sisters' stories building into a larger book was very intriguing, and though I enjoyed parts of this book, overall it just didn't do it for me.

Part of that, I think is that I'm really just not a contemporary realistic fiction reader in general. My overall preferences are fantasy/sci-fi/historical, etc. *Sigh* This book got such great reviews, I really wanted to love it.

I did enjoy parts of it very much. I loved Jane's story about blogging her family secrets to the world, and Sassy's story about thinking she'd become indestructible, but I just couldn't really connect at all to Norrie and I felt like I was really reading three individual books rather than one larger one.

Standiford did a good job layering complexities into the stories, building on each girl's experiences during the same time, but there was still a feeling of utter disconnect for me. One of my biggest problems, too, was that a secondary character named Shea was mentioned over and over and over, yet her story was never explained. I really wanted to know why she did the things she did!! *(An update - I emailed the author and she said that though she did not really envision exactly what happened to Shea, that I could imagine a happy ending for her...so I'm choosing to think that she turns her life around!)

This book was well written and I am sure that a lot of people will really enjoy it. Unfortunately, it just didn't quite capture my attention the way I'd hoped it would.