Abandoned by Booklikes

Please note that this book deals with rape.

You know I used to eat up Ms. Frank's books like candy a few years back. She made me dream of the lowcountry and smelling salt air. Her last few books have been a struggle to get through though. This one had too many characters and an epilogue that made me roll my eyes.

The Hurricane Sisters follows several characters: Maisie Pringle, the family matriarch, Maisie's daughter Liz, Liz's husband Clayton, and Liz and Clayton's son Ivy and daughter Ashley.

I disliked each of these characters except for Ivy. I thought it was cute how he got his name (he is the IV so he became Ivy) and I liked his relationship in the book. Unfortunately we don't get to spend that much time on him. We just keep getting thrust back into the stupidity of the other characters.

Maisie is highly critical of Liz and not loving to her at all and seems determined to spoil her grandchildren. When we get why Maisie acted the way she did in the end I thought it was pretty childish all in all and doesn't make any sense since Liz is her only child still living. I think readers were supposed to be charmed by her eccentricities.

Liz is a martyr, full stop. So even though I had some pangs of sympathy for her, I was sick of reading about it. Putting your hand in the sand about your marriage is not something to be proud of or applauded.

Ashley was infuriating as hell. Her getting a crush on a Senator and excusing everything that he does to her because she wants to be First Lady one day? I mean come on. There is another scene that I won't get into here, but I was appalled at how Frank handled it and had Ashley kind of shrugging off what happened to her.

Clayton was an ass. I don't have much to say to him except I am hard pressed to see what attracted him or Liz to each other at all.

The secondary characters like Ashley's best friend Mary Beth were given nothing to do really. I was also really offended by how Ms. Frank portrays a supposedly Saudi businessman who was on a nearby boat that Mary Beth was dating.

The writing was pretty bad in my opinion. Every time the character Ashley "spoke" I wanted to shake her. Sorry, I had a really tough time dealing with this character who had the mentality of a 12 year old who all she wanted to be was first lady of the U.S. like Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

Sorry, five characters was way too many for this book. It jumped around a lot and the flow was terrible from beginning to end.

The final reveal of what happened to Liz's sister Julia I thought was ham-fisted and lacked any sort of emotion behind it because Ms. Frank seems to think that Southern people just don't discuss their emotions or feelings.

The ending I think was supposed to wrap everything up in a tidy bow, but we pretty much had every character in a state of arrested development as far as I can see.