The Sun Sister

This sixth instalment in Lucinda Riley’s often irritating but always compelling blockbuster Seven Sisters has glared at me from my TBR (to be read) shelf for months. Even for a paperback, it’s heavy to hold and I attempted it twice before finally deciding I must woman-up and complete this marathon – if nothing else as tribute to the author’s admirable dedication to keep the epic going even when faced with her own mortality.
 
Electra the supermodel is a mess. She has everything, and nothing. Her latest romance with a rock star has ended, she can’t get through the day without lashings of vodka and coke (not Coca Cola). She’s angry all the time and envies or despises the other adopted sisters with whom she was raised in Switzerland by the mysterious Pa Salt, always feeling like the odd one out.
 
As with the other books in this series, each sister has been given clues as to how she came to be adopted by Pa Salt, but Electra is the most reluctant to follow the route. Until a mysterious woman called Stella arrives, claiming to be her biological grandmother.
 
Stella tells the story of Cecily, a wealthy young New Yorker, who escapes a couple of failed relationships in the 1930s and is taken under the wing of her flighty godmother Kiki, who lives in “Happy Valley” in colonial Kenya. What happens to Cecily there has a direct bearing on Electra.
 
Even if Cecily can seem annoyingly naïve at times, her experiences and relationships are far better to read about than those of the destructive and unpleasant Electra. The atmosphere surrounding the expat community in Kenya during this era is well conveyed, with Bill Forsythe, the farmer who “rescues” Cecily, being the best portrayal.
 
Of course, Electra does turn her life around eventually, but it comes way too late for me to care much about her, although one of my concerns that other reviewers have remarked on, is perhaps it wasn’t the wisest decision of the author to make the least likeable sister a woman of colour – and one who seemed to be grossly unaware of what others of her race have to endure.
 
The two final books are still smiling at me from the shelf: “The Missing Sister” and “Atlas. The Story of Pa Salt”. I’ll get there at some stage, but not just yet.
 
A bit less than two stars for Electra, three plus for Cecily.

 
amazon.com
 
amazon.co.uk
 
Dymocks

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