The Favorite Sister

When the Real Housewives and Big Little Lies collide—Jessica Knoll's The Favorite Sister is a perfect concoction of both reality television and female dynamics.When I heard Jessica Knoll was coming out with a second novel that exploited the reality television genre in the same vein of the Real Housewives, I was immediately sold. How can I get a copy? What do I need to do? Who's going to be Bethenny Frankel in her book?! I'd do almost anything to get my hands on a copy, no joke. The story involves five wealthy women in New York City who are all featured in the hit reality television show called Goal Diggers. Goal Diggers is a show that strives to show millennial women successfully undertaking careers, while pushing gender norms aside. This cast is uninterested in having children and being stay-at-home mothers; they'd rather break the Forbes 100 list. In this dynamic group, we have Brett Courtney—a twenty-seven year old lesbian woman who is unafraid of what people may say about her body image and runs a yoga studio called SPOKE. She is tattooed and voluptuous, and she makes no apologies for it. Stephanie Simmons can be deemed the token black woman character on the cast, but she is so much more than that. She is a successful author, businesswoman, and wife; who has just released her empowering memoir that is breaking sales records. Lauren Bunn has launched her innovative dating app that is growing in popularity each day, but her drunken antics have caught tabloid attention that overshadows all the success that she has gained. Jen Greenberg, daughter of philanthropist and socialite Yvette Greenberg, has become the voice for dieting and health food options, claiming that her food line not only encourages a healthy body and mind, but also is a catalyst for success. Lastly, we meet Kelly Courtney, Brett's sister and cofounder of SPOKE. Kelly is the newest cast member for the upcoming season and really doesn't fit the mold of the initial concept of the series. She has a twelve year old daughter and is a single mother with modest flair. Goal Diggers is set to begin filming, but nobody would have guessed that it would end in murder.I don't want to get any further into the plot than just introducing you to the cast and providing the main theme of the story. The story develops much further than that little blurb, but I felt that you really need a cheat sheet for the main five characters because we are quickly introduced to all five of them (and at least 3-4 secondary characters) immediately. Take the blurb about the cast and carry it with you while you read, I wish I had one! The beginning of The Favorite Sister was rough, I have to tell you. We are thrown way too much about the cast early on, with long chapters that don't provide us a break to digest what we just read. We don't really go anywhere in the first part of this novel because there's too much catch up for us to get to. The novel is broken into several parts, and each part is more enjoyable than its predecessor. Once I got to the halfway mark, I was hooked! As you get to the core of the story, we learn about the exploitation of reality television, we see the dynamics between family and friends, we see how society has forced feminism and women empowerment into a women-eat-women world, and we see fame and notoriety being used as a drug and the lengths people will go for that drug. One thing that I found so profound in The Favorite Sister was the theme of casual racism in every day life. We see a portrayal of how society uses casual racism in dating, business, and overall privilege. I did not expect this novel to even touch any of those topics, and for that I'm grateful. I believe that these thematic elements of the story will resonate with more readers than Ms. Knoll probably imagined. I loved that this story touched on all these different themes without feeling overloaded on plot. The plot is clearly defined as you go on and the story really doesn't deter from that.The Favorite Sister is NOT a thriller or a suspense novel in ANY CAPACITY and if anyone tells you otherwise, they're lying. The Favorite Sister really is a drama that may also feel like a tragedy at times. Ugh I can keep talking more about the story, but I think I drove the point home. It's time to pick up this book on May 15, 2018. Will I be buying a hard cover for my collection? Absolutely.

📚BOOK REVIEW📚The Favorite Sister by Jessica KnollRating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5Genres: Thriller/MysteryTropes: reality TV, secrets and backstabbing, influencer culture, sibling rivalryBrett was the problem child growing up, and lived in the shadow of her older (and beautiful) sister Kelly. However, in adulthood, that changed. Kelly is a struggling single mother, while Brett has become a CEO of a successful company she started (and her success has been chronicled on a reality TV show called ‘Goal Diggers’.Much to Brett’s annoyance, Kelly manipulates her want onto the show and into Brett’s world. Brett is rightfully threatened, as she knows it doesn’t make sense for the network to keep them both. If she wants to stay for the next season, she has to establish her position on the show. In addition, Kelly knows shocking secrets about her that could ruin her life and career.Throughout the story, the readers see both sides to a feud between Brett and another one of the women on the show (through dual-POV), and everyone tries desperately to keep their secrets from coming out.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I have a lot of thoughts about this one. Overall, I really enjoyed it. I personally find reality TV entertaining/fascinating, so book/shows like this where you get a “peek behind the curtain” are very interesting to me. This one had one of my favorite tropes/concepts, which is where you begin to ask yourself “who is really the villain here?” and you’re shown multiple sides to the same story.It was also dual-timeline (technically) where we jump between present day (Kelly’s interview about her sister) and the past (before Brett was murdered). It was cool, because Kelly would hint at things in the interview and then the reader would get more details about them through Brett’s and Stephanie’s (one of the other women on the show) POVs. All of the women have secrets which are gradually revealed throughout the book, which keeps you guessing. I also personally did not predict some of the things that were revealed in the end.I did have issues with some things though. The writing style is definitely unique, and it took me a bit to get in to. The way information is laid out can be kind of confusing, and there are little time jumps in between a lot of the chapters and even in the chapters as well (which makes it hard to keep track of the overall timeline).Sometimes, with the way it was written, it was hard to even visualize scenes (like who is there, who is talking, what they are talking about). And these aspects are super important, because the secrets the women are hiding from each other is a big part of the book (and it was easy to miss “that woman overheard everything” type details). Additionally, at times it was like characters had inside jokes that even the reader wasn’t given context to (which felt confusing and kind of annoying).There was also a plot hole that seems minor but ended up really driving the events that happened. Multiple times throughout the book, one of the women would read someone else’s texts just by glancing at their phone. This book takes place in 2017. I feel like, especially when they are all keeping secrets, they would have locked their phones or hidden the incoming messages. At least twice major information is revealed via this method, so it was pretty important to the plot.Overall, if you like thriller/mysteries about groups of women who are hiding secrets, or if you (like myself) enjoy “behind the scenes of reality TV” type stories, you may enjoy this one.

If you like reality tv shows about women degrading each other constantly, then this is the book for you. Not one of the characters in the book had redeeming qualities by the end, which was an interesting take on womanhood. So long as no one takes from this book that this is how women actually interact and think about each other, then this is a decent book that is easy to read. It's not going to transform your life by any means, but it's a nice and entertaining read.

This book was truly mediocre. First, the title doesn’t really fit the plot of the book. Second, the cast of characters is large and confusing, I found myself forgetting which women were the producers verses the “diggers” in the book. There was little character development outside of the main 3 women in the story. The book also had no hero character, no one to root for. Finally, this book was borderline painful to read. I read The Luckiest Girl Alive and found it so captivating, this book on the other hand was so dull and boring. I think the author wrote from experience in TLGA and you could really connect with the main character as a result. In this story, however, the author attempted to touch on racism, LGBTQ issues, domestic violence, and other more. Perhaps her lack of direct experience in these areas lead to an inauthenticity in the characters. Whatever the reason, I felt this book was such a let down after TLGA.

This is not a story for the faint of heart. It is satisfying in a way that is hard to describe; you don't get to fully experience and understand it unless you actually read every word. Skipping to the end would be a waste of time. Ultimately worth the wait, the ending will shock you. It was well worth the time.