Saturday, March 24, 2018

27. The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson

listened to on Audible
read by the author, and boy do I love to hear her read her work!
2017 William Morris
342 pgs.
Adult CRF
Finished 3/24/18
Goodreads rating:  4.02 - 9552 ratings
My rating: 5 !!!
Contemporary small-town Alabama

First line/s:  "Superheroes have always been Leia Burch Briggs's weakness.  One tequila-soaked at a comic-book convention, the usually level-headed graphic novel artist is swept off her barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman.  She remembers that he was tall, black, and an excellent French kisser - but not much else."

My comments:  This was a fabulous book.  Beautiful, fluent, often comical writing.  One heckuva story.  I listened to the author reading this herself and it was like a special gift.  I've read a lot of good books recently, but this one will go down as the best I've read in a long time.

Goodreads synopsis: With empathy, grace, humor, and piercing insight, the author of Gods in Alabama pens a powerful, emotionally resonant novel of the South that confronts the truth about privilege, family, and the distinctions between perception and reality - the stories we tell ourselves about our origins and who we really are.
          Superheroes have always been Leia Birch Briggs' weakness. One tequila-soaked night at a comics convention, the usually level-headed graphic novelist is swept off her barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman. 
          It turns out the caped crusader has left her with more than just a nice, fuzzy memory. She's having a baby boy - an unexpected but not unhappy development in the thirty-eight year-old's life. But before Leia can break the news of her impending single-motherhood (including the fact that her baby is biracial) to her conventional, Southern family, her step-sister Rachel's marriage implodes. Worse, she learns her beloved ninety-year-old grandmother, Birchie, is losing her mind, and she's been hiding her dementia with the help of Wattie, her best friend since girlhood.
          Leia returns to Alabama to put her grandmother's affairs in order, clean out the big Victorian that has been in the Birch family for generations, and tell her family that she's pregnant. Yet just when Leia thinks she's got it all under control, she learns that illness is not the only thing Birchie's been hiding. Tucked in the attic is a dangerous secret with roots that reach all the way back to the Civil War. Its exposure threatens the family's freedom and future, and it will change everything about how Leia sees herself and her sister, her son and his missing father, and the world she thinks she knows.

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