The almost archer sisters by Lisa Gabriele

Copyright: 2008

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Genre: fiction

Pages: 248

Challenges: None

New-to-me author? Yes

Simple Description

I took the following from the authors website:

Two sisters bound by an impossible-to-forget past and a still-uncertain future.
Georgia "Peachy" Archer Laliberte has never left the Ontario farm where she was born and raised. Unlike her self-absorbed older sister, Beth, who hightailed it out of there the minute she finished high school, Peachy is content with the rural life—and with being a young wife and mom. In fact, she's done everything she said she'd never do. She's dropped out of college to marry the boy who knocked her up, she's had two kids in a row and she's stayed home to raise them. But occasionally (very occasionally) she's wondered what might have been had her choices been similar to her sister's. Still Peachy wouldn't trade her moody husband or her two delicious sons (one of whom has daily epileptic seizures) for all the trappings of her sister's glamorous life.
Beth wasn't born with Peachy's self-doubt. Manhattan was her destination since childhood. When not in front of the cameras herself, she's traveling the world with her arch crew of sundry enablers. Beth does visit the farm often—to get a dose of much-needed unconditional love—but mostly to get her roots touched up by her father Lou, an American draft dodger with a talent for hair and a heart the size of his home state, Texas.

But it is during one of these visits that Peachy's world is turned upside down. After a few too many shots at the town tavern, Peachy finds Beth and her husband Beau in flagrante delicto in the kitchen pantry. Devastated—Peachy chooses an unthinkable form of retribution—she abandons her family, leaves behind a repentant Beth to mind the kids and the laundry, and heads to New York to exact a bit of revenge. Peachy, who has never been on a plane before, much less to a place as daunting as New York, has an ace up her sleeve. She knows Beth has been toying with her ex via an online dating website, luring him with a phony profile based to some degree on Peachy. And now she's ready to tell him all about Beth's shoddy subterfuge—while on a date with him herself—another first.
As Peachy navigates the darker realities of her sister's seemingly glamorous life, she comes to reevaluate her own life. As the story unfolds, we learn that Beth is Peachy's half-sister who's had her own sordid history with Beau. And we come to see how their mother's suicide has had a dramatically different impact on each of the sister's lives.
THE ALMOST ARCHER SISTERS is already earning accolades from women who've craved a book that tells the unvarnished truth about sisterhood, motherhood, and what it really means to love unconditionally.

Why did I read this book?
I thought it sounded good. How's that for an original answer?

About the book:
Actually, I'm not going to add anything extra about the book here – what I took from the author's website actually summed everything up pretty well.

What I liked most:

I thought the story itself was good. Two sisters, one of the on a path of destruction and living the life in NY, the other knocked up at 20 and becoming a wife and mother earlier than expected and before her dreams were reached. One is responsible, the other isn't. So what happens when the irresponsible older sister does the unthinkable? The other one takes off and tries to come to terms with what happened while at the same time figuring out her life.

Was there something I didn't like?

I didn't like the way it was written. Yes, I liked the story itself, but the writing style was lacking. If you have followed my blog for a bit then you know that it irks me when an author has the reader go back and forth between the past and present in the same chapter. The author did this throughout the entire book. There were times when the character would be in the present and the next couple of paragraphs are in the past, then right back into the present. I just don't like it. I find it confusing. I wish we would have gotten all of the past stuff first and then the present or that the back and forth was done differently and better.

Do I recommend the book?

Not sure. While I thought the story itself was interesting, I didn't like the way it was written. My thoughts are that the book was ok, but not great. I would recommend that if the story intrigues you, that you pick up the book at the bookstore, read half a chapter or so. If the writing doesn't bother you, then go for it. If it does, put it back down and move on to another book.

Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Leave me ac omment to let me know and I'll link it below.

Sorry, no linked reviews yet.

Happy Reading and thanks for stopping by……Kris