I know some of y’all like a lot of mess and a quick finish. This is right up your alley.

If you just read this book and go along for the ride, you’ll definitely enjoy it. This book is 100% more for entertainment than in-depth consumption. There were times I felt like I was watching a BET show like Tyler Perry’s Sistas. It seems like maybe there was one character too many. It was almost as if, for the sake of the book, everyone had to have something going on all at once.

You have the once-broke friend who wins the lottery and pretty much runs through all the money. Yeah, one of the friends is a financial advisor and couldn’t connect her to someone to help her? You have a friend who is having fertility issues and a troubled past but didn’t think to tell her lawyer husband? Another woman’s daughter is sick, and her husband is a gambler, yet she still allows him to have access to major accounts? Then there’s a friend suffering from PTSD from a carjacking who refuses to go to therapy even though it’s destroying all of her relationships. It did feel like a lot of stereotypical tropes were on display.

There was this lingering depiction of the black women being selfish or self-serving, sassy, and being at times irresponsible. Even Darryl as the down-on-his-luck Black man who needs a ninth chance or a character like Skins—because what would this book have been without Black men coming from jail? I think I would’ve preferred if the drama was cascading. Plus, it always appears when we get these very strong in presence and personality women characters, they have to be immature in some other way, especially in their communication style.

This is definitely the kind of book I could see recommended for a book club or just to casually read on the weekend, but the minute you start to look deeper into it, there’s just too many things to pick apart. But something tells me this book could easily have a follow-up based on how it ended, and people would eat that up as well just because it’s so drama-filled, and the drama and situations are so over the top.

While some of the obstacles the characters are facing are very real and could easily happen, it’s the way in which the situations unfold that make them feel very distant and soap operatic. I can understand having smart characters that make occasionally biased or misinformed decisions, but it just felt like it was one dumb choice after another.

And to say that this book is about sisterhood is really loosely using that term. These women spend more time arguing and jabbing at each other—and not in the keke way. It made it quite obvious where the book was going to go, but also unfortunate in the pace at which we arrived there. By the time the climax happens, the ending just quickly wraps up.

All that is not to say I didn’t enjoy reading this book; it is definitely a guilty pleasure. It may not have been what I was really hoping for, but I’m also not mad at it. It knows what it offers and what it’s doing.

368 pgs
Pub Date: Jul 30th

Thanks to Netgalley & Harlequin Trade Publishing for this Digital Arc.

Fiction