Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares
Everyone, except maybe Peter Pan, has to grow up, and that includes Carmen, Tibby, Lena, and Bee. For these four friends, growing up encompasses all kinds of things: a pregnancy scare, learning what “home†means, thinking about why you selfishly hurt the people around you who have what you don’t, finding out who you are when your friends aren’t around to define you. Most of all, they learn, again, about friendship and love. Loving your family, getting over old heartbreak, getting past the first glow of a relationship, and, of course, learning what true friendship looks like.
This book, more than any of the others, made me wish I could go back and do some of this over – investing in the people who matter rather than the people who are only thinking about themselves, being a more sacrificial friend, learning much sooner what it looks like to care for my friends and family, not letting other people define me, learning how to stand up for myself. These girls are lucky that their friends help them know who they really are, but it took me a lot longer to find people who could help me do that. When I finished it, it’s not an exaggeration to say that I ached a bit to go back and make some of that right. But if there’s a message in the books, it’s that you can’t go back, you have to take what you have made of your life and, with the help of those around you, keep going forward.
I don’t want to give away the ending, but this is the end of the series, which is fitting – the girls learn in this book that they use the pants to push each other away as well as to keep them together. A good lesson for all of us to learn – not to let the things we do with our friends and family be the things that keep us from actually communicating with them.
January 10th, 2007 at
Just wanted to say - LOVED the book. Loved it. I also thought that it was a fitting end, and just really enjoyed…(I hate using this word, but) the journeys that each character went through. I love how real Ann Brashares is, and how you can actually relate to her characteres even though their circumstances are very different.
January 10th, 2007 at
Entertainment Weekly gave it a B+, and I thought that was about right. They said some of it felt like retreads, which . . . Bee’s storyline definitely felt to me like, “Are we really doing this AGAIN?” But then it ended up taking it somewhere else, having a different meaning, and I enjoyed that quite a bit.
January 10th, 2007 at
:wave:
January 10th, 2007 at
Yeah, I thought that about Bee’s storyline too. But I really loved where she went with it. I loved when she gave Perry the bunny, too. So sweet.
January 19th, 2007 at
i read all 4 books and loved all of them! me and my friends are obsessed…we’ve been waiting for the 4th book. I loved it and hated it at the same time. I think that it has a beautiful ending but it makes me sad that it’s the end of the last book. It had a lot of emotions: love, sadness, happines, and mostly REGRET. Brashares has a way of making the book very realistic and something that teen girls can relate to almost word-by-word. Have you ever found yourself quoting phrases from the book in your everyday situations? i have. does anyone know if they’re making more movies?