The Pearl Sister by Lucinda Riley (Seven Sisters Series #4) | Review

If you have read the post about my favourite book series, you know that I love the Seven Sisters Series by my all time favourite writer Lucinda Riley. And you also know that I have been super excited for The Pearl Sister.

The beautiful thing about this series is, that you don’t need to read the books in order. Each and every book works on its own. If you do read this series in order though, you might be blown away – like me – that Lucinda Riley makes it possible to like every sister more than the other. When I first read The Seven Sisters, the first book in the series, I did not like CeCe at all. But by the time the epilogue of The Shadow Sister rolled around, that was written from CeCe’s point of view, I already loved her. And in The Pearl Sister I felt closer to her than ever before.

So, The Pearl Sister is about CeCe and her journey to finding out who she is and where she came from. After her adoptive father Pa Salt died, CeCe, like all of her other sisters, gets a letter from Pa Salt, the coordinates of her birth place and a quote that he chose for each of his daughters. Unlike her sisters, who also get a token, CeCe gets an inheritance, a picture and a name of a female pioneer named Kitty Mercer who lived in Australia from the family lawyer. The picture is supposed to help her find her way back to her biological family.

CeCe has always been close to her only six month older sister, Star. After Star found out about where she came from, CeCe and Star sense a rift in their relationship that neither of them can really deal with. So CeCe leaves London, where the two of them lived and also leaves her art course behind. Her first stop is to Krabi, Thailand. There she meets Ace, a man with a big secret to hide. Later she travels to Australia, where she begins to learn about Kitty Mercer, who might be related to her.

As always, I enjoyed the split narrative between past and present, between Kitty and CeCe. CeCe has really grown on me and I think her insecurities, about her looks, her illiteracy and her personality in general, are very relatable. Whether it is our looks, aspects of our personality or other more specific things, like CeCe not being able to read or write the way she wants it to be, we can all relate to that. In the other three books of the series so far, CeCe always came across as the tough, no-nonsense sister, that was kind of unlikable at first. Now I know that this was all to cover up her insecurities.

Kitty is an adventurer, brave and a fighter. After finding out her father, a pastor, got another woman pregnant, while his wife was also having a baby, her father sends her to Australia to accompany the wealthy Mrs. McCrombie. He hopes that she will find a husband there and never return to Scotland. Kitty finds herself with the Mercer family and is soon courted by Drummond and Andrew, identical twins, who otherwise couldn’t be more different.

Kitty ends up following her head more than her heart. That leads her to a pearl mining town called Broome. I won’t go into all the twists and turns, but Kitty goes through all her hardships in inspiring motion. She never forgets who she is and what’s important to her. A huge topic coming up in both the past and present is Aboriginal culture and the racist behaviour towards Aboriginals. It was fascinating to read about this topic and I love the way Lucinda Riley wove it into the story.

At it’s core the book is about belonging somewhere, finding a place to call home. Honestly, so far this is my favourite of the Seven Sisters Series, although which one my favourite is, has probably a lot to do with which book I read last. I would recommend The Pearl Sister in any case, no matter if you have read any of the other books before. And as always, Lucinda Riley’s book fill my travel bucket list up like nothing else.

The only complaint I have, is that the design, while very pretty, doesn’t fit with the other three books of the series at all. Not the cover, not the spine. And now it doesn’t look like it’s part of the series in my book shelf.

Have you read The Pearl Sister? What did you think? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Information:
Title: The Pearl Sister/Die Perlenschwester
Author: Lucinda Riley
Publisher: Pan Macmillan/Goldmann
Publishing Date: 02-11-2017/30.10.2017