Sisters and Secrets

I got an ARC of this book. Jennifer Ryan delivers on the emotions, big time.

This book is a wonderful example that families can hurt and heal together. the story will drag emotions out of you from start to finish. It will make you cry then melt your heart. I will make you angry then make you laugh. This is my first experience with a Jennifer Ryan novel but it will hardly be my last.

The beginning is painful but the ending is so beautiful and uplifting.

This is a moving novel about the relationships sisters have and how they translate in adulthood causing problems and solving them.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

It interested me as the main gal was leaving with her two sons from the devasting fires in Napa, which is so close to us and we had our fires two years later, last year. It was realistic family life but there were unpredictable happening that makes one really feel for the people in the story.

There is no bond stronger and yet more fragile than the one between sisters! This book highlights that truth in such a way that it grabs the heart-strings and pulls all of the emotional baggage right out into the open where the healing can then begin as these sisters discover. Deeply moving and emotionally impactful, this book should be read by anyone blessed to have a sister!!

I voluntarily reviewed an advanced reader copy of this book provided to me by the publisher through NetGalley.

Another very well written family drama by Jennifer Ryan. If you are very lucky family is who you go to when you need love, support and a safe place to lay your head even if only for a short time. Sierra, the loving mother of two becomes a widow way too young. A short while later the home she and her boys live in and mourn their husband/dad in burns to the ground. Feeling overwhelmed she decides to head home for a time. Home is her mother, 2 sisters, their families and community that that is familiar, feels safe and maybe, just maybe the possibility of a rekindled love. Everyone has secrets. Some little fibs and some whoppers. Sierra, while trying to figure out what secrets her husband was hiding before his untimely death and what the loan he had taken out was for discovers that her sister Amys picture perfect life staged for social media is not all it seems and that Heather, the incredibly selfish, spoiled narcissist of a sister is hiding something major and can’t quite put her finger on it. Honestly, Heathers secret was not really a surprise and yet knowing it didn’t take away from anything for me. The family dynamic seems real and though does wrap things up, it doesn’t leave everything perfect and all better, though in a million years I would never speak to Heather again! Clearly the author is more evolved than I am! I very much look forward to more from this wonderful author. She has become a favorite.

Jennifer Ryan’s Sisters And Secrets starts with Sierra, a widow struggling to raise two boys on her own after the death of her husband but loses her home to a devastating Napa wildfire. Homeless and jobless, she goes back to her hometown to figure out what to do next. Amy, Sierra’s older sister, has a perfect life, perfect husband, perfect children except it is all lies. Heather, the youngest Silva sister, will not reveal the identity of daughter’s father. Sierra’s homecoming breaks out their secrets into the open, and each sister learns there is more to their family than meets the eyes.
Jennifer Ryan does a superb job creating a family of sisters who grew up close but now has grown apart with secrets of their own. The plot is beautifully written and emotionally compelling with drama that I could not put the book down. The in-depth development of the characters exposes their flaws and insecurities. Sisters And Secrets will make you laugh and cry as each sister overcomes obstacles and finds forgiveness along the way.

Jennifer Ryan is back with another stand-alone story and OH BOY is it a doozy! It is the tale of the three Silva sisters and their lives as adults and the secrets they keep.

Sierra, the eldest sister who is widowed with 2 boys and has just lost everything they owned in a fire that destroyed their little town, taking with it all of the answers to her deceased husband’s secrets. Sierra is the giver of the sisters, and even when she returned home after all of the horrors she had been through, she took no real-time for herself, just focused on her family.

Then there is Amy; she seems to have the Instagram perfect life with her husband and two children, but nothing could be farther from the truth, with Amy’s over-scheduling and micromanaging pushing her little family to the brink. But Amy is also the headstrong and blunt one of the sisters, the justice fighter, but also loving and indulgent and I have to admit, my favorite of the sisters.

Then there is the youngest Silva sister Heather, spoiled by everyone, is also jealous, resentful, and full of secrets, like who is the father to her beautiful baby girl.

Oh my goodness, this book is explosive! it is a mix of a heartbreaking story with a heartwarming ending that only Jennifer Ryan could produce. I could dive in deep with more of my own personal thoughts and feelings on the character, I would end up giving away the whole story. But at the end of the day, the book is brilliant, I enjoyed this diversion from the normal (but thrilling) books the author writes, only to be emotionally devastated by this one.