Like the Unhoneymooners, Almost Sisters is a work of fiction that has me questioning everything I thought I knew about my taste in books. Generally, my preferences run to non-fiction and historical fiction, with a bit of mystery writing and a dash of the classics. Almost Sisters is decidedly none of these - it even has, horror of horrors, more fantasy Con and gaming references than I could shake a stick at - and yet I really, really enjoyed it. It ended before I was ready, and I wondered if Joshilyn Jackson had set it up for a sequel.
Leia Birch Briggs is 38, single, and famous in the world of comic book illustrators, where she is one of the best. Almost Sisters opens with her discovering that, after a few too many tequilas at one recent ComicCon, she is also pregnant by a Batman whose features she can only vaguely recall. He was black, though, of that she is certain, which means she'll have to tell her conservative, southern family that not only is she pregnant with a stranger's child, but the baby will be biracial.
Her plan to share the news goes awry when her stepsister's marriage implodes on the same day that her 90-year-old grandmother's Lewy body dementia becomes very, very public to mroe or less the entire town of Birchville, Alabama. Leia's grandmother is Birchie, and she is the reigning Birch, the last Birch residing in the town her forebear's founded. The combination of events sends Leia directly to Birchville in the company of her 13-year-old niece, Lavender, where together they must convince Birchie and her equally elderly BFF to decamp for assisted living.
And then mayhem ensues. Lavender meddles in Leia's life. Leia meddles in Lavender's life (and by extension that of her stepsister and brother-in-law). And Birchie and Wattie share secrets they will stop at nothing to keep. The skeletons in the closet aren't all metaphorical.
Five stars.
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