4 out of 4 stars
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The Reel Sisters by Michelle Cummings is a fiction novel that tells the story of five friends whose lives are forever bonded through the sport of fly-fishing. The book is split into each character's POV with fun excerpts from fly-fishing novels separating the chapters. Brief descriptions of the main characters are as follows:
Rose is the matriarch of the group who may be old in age but continuously exhibits her youthful personality throughout the book. However, for all of her humor and wise advice that she gives to the other girls, Rose struggles with a secret that she has kept buried for over twenty years.
Sophie is a middle-aged greenhouse owner who can make just about anything grow except for a romantic relationship. She is an expert at helping others to solve their problems but is frequently running away from her own.
Veronica is a successful writer and motivational speaker who is sharp-witted, feisty, and very protective of her friends. Her husband, Thatcher is the owner and head chef of Noir, a popular dining and entertainment restaurant.
Amanda is a mellow-tempered schoolteacher and mother of two who is trying to keep her life in balance after her husband is deployed to Afghanistan.
Melody is a young photographer and skilled musician whom the group encounters when they rescue her from a stream during an annual fishing trip. Melody is taken under their wing as she seeks to establish her purpose in the world.
This is a wonderful story for those who enjoy reading about close-knit friendships and who are looking to heal emotionally. Personally, I enjoyed how diverse the personalities and backgrounds between all the characters were. The variety in age, ethnicity, and temperament were like the ingredients to a stew in which one flavor complements another. These characters are memorable and realistic due to the experiences they share together and separately. Also, the writing style that the author uses to is vivacious and colorful. It very much felt as if the story played out like a movie in my mind. I also appreciated that the author put so much detail into explaining the physical aspect of fly-fishing so that readers had the opportunity to understand this unique sport.
The one aspect about this story that I would change would be the way in which the author ends the novel. To explain, the ending felt very anticlimactic in the sense that there was so much build up towards the climax of the story, but after these events unfolded the rest of the storytelling felt rushed. Where the book is evenly split between five different character POV’s, we only hear from two of the characters at the end. It felt as though while some of the characters experienced a sense of closure in finding solutions to their personal problems, the fate of other characters was left to be assumed by the audience.
There were only two errors that I noticed throughout the entire book. The nature of these errors include a repetition of words used in a sentence as well as incomplete phrasing. I consider these errors to cause no major damage toward the quality of reading but do suggest that more careful proofreading be practiced in the future.
To conclude this review, I rate The Reel Sisters by Michelle Cummings a 4 out of 4 stars. This book will be sure to evoke emotion of the rawest kind in readers and will hold a fond place in one’s memory. The message of this book is sincere and empowering, and I look forward to reading other works by this author in the future.
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The Reel Sisters
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