Sisterhood 2

The Second Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares is the second book in her five-novel “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” series. In this novel, the four best friends, Bridger, Carmen, Tibby, and Lena, experience their second summer with their “magical” pants. The girls share the same rules with the pants as they had the previous summer. The most important rule is that the pants must be mailed to another girl in the “sisterhood” when one girl is done using them. Over this summer, Bridget goes off to Alabama to find out more about her family. Carmen encircles herself with worries about her mother’s new love. Tibby enrolls in a college film program, and Lena lets herself get involved in a romance. The pants once again follow each girl through her joys, fears, happy times, and sad times.
At first, I was very excited to see this book come out. I loved the original novel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants so much that I figured that I would love the sequel as well. Unfortunately I was somewhat disappointed with this novel. I expected to read it and not want to stop turning the pages. I was expecting an exciting, inspirational, and heart-warming story, but that is not really what I got. All though this book produced some “warm fuzzies” inside, it was highly predictable. By the time I finished reading the first few chapters, I pretty much knew what was going to happen in the rest of the novel. I did however finish reading a book because I hate leaving a book halfway read. This book also had much of the same plot as its predecessor, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I was disappointed in this because I believe that if an author is going to write a sequel, the novel should have more differences than similarities. Ann Brashares could have stopped at just having the same characters with the same pants, but she wrote The Second Summer of the Sisterhood with pretty much different versions of the same events that occurred in the original novel.
Honestly, I probably would not recommend this book to a fellow reader. If they read the original novel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Points, they might share the same frustration and disappointment that I experienced with the second novel. However, if they are like I am, they would buy every novel in the series because of the amazing quality of the original novel. Although The Second Summer of the Sisterhood is quite boring and predictable, it is worth it to read it because the following novels, Girls in Pants, Forever in Blue, and Willow are all amazing novels, and they are well worth the read. All in all, although this novel is not a very good read, it is somewhat of a key part to the series, so if one is interested in reading the entire “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” series, it is in his or her best interest to read the second novel, The Second Summer of the Sisterhood.