THE UGLY SISTER by JANE FALLON

THE UGLY SISTER

BY JANE FALLON

THE BLURB:-

Beauty can be a blessing or a curse. As Abi would be the first to know. She has spent her life in the shadow of her stunningly beautiful, glamorous older sister Cleo.

Headhunted as a model when she was sixteen, Cleo has been all but lost to Abi for the last twenty years, with only a fleeting visit or brief email to connect them. So when Abi is invited to spend the summer with her sister's perfect family, she can't bring herself to say no. Maybe Cleo is finally as keen as Abi to regain the closeness they shared in their youth?

But Abi is in for a shock. Soon she is left caring for her two young, bored and very spoilt nieces and handsome, unhappy brother-in-law Jon...while Cleo plainly has other things on her mind. As Abi moves into her sister's life, a cuckoo in the nest, she wrestles with uncomfortable feelings.

Could having beauty, wealth and fame lead to more unhappiness than not having them? Who in the family really is the ugly sister?

THE REALITY:-

Drab. Drear. A mission to finish. "Skeletons" by the same author, was great, but this story did not really do it for me and seemed to run on....and on....and on....

It did, however, bring up some interesting and personal dilemmas. Is blood thicker than water? No, no, fucking NO! In my experience it most certainly is not, although there are many in that small, shitty fucking town that I grew up in who would disagree, as family values and unity seemed to stand way above everything else in importance there. I suppose you could say that I empathized with this book as I wasn't the favourite child in my family either (or so it seemed) although I take that as a compliment. I personally had a brother with a learning disability (not diagnosed until AFTER my parents' deaths) and I kind of got the impression that it was my responsibility to befriend him, deal with him and bring him out of his shell, even though he was over ten years older than me. Note to my parents from this side of the grave:- bring up your children yourself, and stop trying to palm those you can't be bothered with off onto other people.

Rant over. At school I studied drama at O level and we had to keep drama diaries about the lesson, and I always used them as an excuse to go in depth on a related, personal subject, as I am doing now. But this is my blog, so I can!

Cleo is definitely the ugly sister in this book and will sadly end up very alone. She's used and rejected her sister and, in general, uses people. And not very nicely either. She will meet all of those she abused on the way up, on the way down, and that's something she's currently finding out. The characters were all very believable, but being the devil that I am, I would have loved to have seen Abi get together with Jon. The story gave a good descriptive with regard to the Primrose Hill area of London and there was the odd twist in the tale with- spoiler alert- Jon and Abi's infatuation with each other and also the discovery that Richard was indeed very shallow. I also loved Abi's down-to-earth daughter, Phoebe, who found Cleo very transparent and saw her for what she really was.  I'm also glad that Cleo's spoilt children developed as better human beings under Abi's coaxing.  But the story dragged and dragged towards a very insignificant and nondescript ending. Hardly blockbuster material.