Seven Sisters: A heavenly trip
Books: The Seven Sisters series Author: Lucinda Riley Reviewed by: Samantha Keogh Since Lucinda Riley released the first of her Seven Sisters series, titled Seven Sisters, in 2015, I have been hooked on the series. I am currently reading the sixth book, The Sun Sister, and have been captivated by each of the books. The …
Books: The Seven Sisters series
Author: Lucinda Riley
Reviewed by: Samantha Keogh
Since Lucinda Riley released the first of her Seven Sisters series, titled Seven Sisters, in 2015, I have been hooked on the series.
I am currently reading the sixth book, The Sun Sister, and have been captivated by each of the books.
The series was inspired by the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades, which lends a mythological quality to the premise underlying the series.
Each book deals with the life of one of the sisters but they all start from the same event – the death of their adoptive father Pa Salt, who found each of his daughters in a different country, across the continents, and in different circumstances.
Up until his death, Pa Salt, who is seemingly in his 80s while his youngest daughter Electra is only 25 when he dies, has never revealed to any of them where they are from or anything about their birth families.
However, upon his death he leaves each of them a letter which, paired with the armillary sphere he had erected in the garden, gives them a clue as to where to start looking for their roots, should they choose to do so.
Each of the women find that they are from a different country and have family they are able to make connections with in the world, far from the Swiss fairy-tale island on which Pa brought them up in the lap of luxury.
At the beginning of the series, which tells the tale of Maia, the eldest daughter, we are introduced to six of the seven sisters but the seventh sister seems, at first, not to exist.
In fact none of the six sisters we meet knows if there ever was a seventh and if so who she was or what happened to her.
Also read: Book review: Who put this song on?
It is as if Pa Salt never found his seventh daughter, so the reader is left wondering throughout the series what or who the seventh book (to be released in October this year) will be about since there seems to be no logical protagonist for this book.
While Riley says (on her website) that she is currently writing the last of the series, the reader is left unsure, to the very last sentence of the sixth book, whether a seventh sister exists.
The contents of this last book will thus remain, unlike the others, a mystery until the day it is released.
However, if you are an avid fan and have read all six thus far, you may have picked up on some of the clues Riley has strewn through the books as to what she might reveal in the last book.
Riley says of the Sisters series: “I was very attracted to the fact that each one of the mythological sisters was, according to their legends, a unique and strong female.
“The Seven Sisters series unashamedly celebrates the endless search for love, and explores the devastating consequences when it is lost to us.
“As I travel round the world, following in the footsteps of my factual and fictional female characters to research their stories, I am constantly humbled and awed by the tenacity and courage of the generations of women who came before me.
“Whether fighting the sexual and racial prejudices of times gone by, losing their loved ones to the devastation of war or disease, or making a new life on the other side of the world, these women paved the way for us to have the freedom of thought and deed that we enjoy today.
“The world is sadly still not a perfect place, and I doubt it ever will be, because there will always be a new challenge ahead.
“Yet I truly believe that humans – especially women – thrive on this.
“The Seven Sisters is a story about humanity: love, family, joy, loss, fear and pain.
“And above all, the one gift that is more important than any other, and has kept us humans alive throughout unbearable suffering: hope.”
Also read: Book review: All I Said Was…
I have also devoured most of her other standalone offerings and am pleased to report that no two of Riley’s works are the same, so there is little chance of you becoming bored or suffering the sense of déjà vu which so often happens when you read a number of books by the same author.
The books do not need to be read in order but, as the King said (in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – another of my favourite books which you simply must read if you haven’t already) advises: “Begin at the beginning and go on to till the end; and then stop,” you really should read all of them to get a sense of their combined history and find the clues they contain about the seventh sister.
Follow us on our social media platforms:
