Review: Surfside Sisters

Surfside Sisters by Nancy Thayer
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like "Surfside Sisters" by Nancy Thayer, but most of the characters not only weren't likeable, in a lot of cases I found them to be incredibly annoying and juvenile. I also found myself rolling my eyes at the book's ending. (That in and of itself made me reduce my rating from 3 stars to 2.) However, I did find myself wanting to keep turning the pages, hoping that something would happen to make Keely, the main character, wake up and choose a better path for herself. Unfortunately, that never happened.

There were so many things that frustrated me about this book. First, we only got Keely's side of the story, and frankly she came across as kind of whiny and pathetic a lot of the time. She was so desperate to be accepted by the Maxwell family that she put up with - even encouraged! - what seemed like very poor treatment from both Isabelle and Sebastian. That said, my perception of events might have been different if we had heard Isabelle's side of the story too.

From Keely's perspective, Isabelle came across as an incredibly selfish, entitled person who was never truly a friend to Keely, and yet, no matter what, Keely still wanted to be her friend to the end. There were a few times I wanted to reach into the book and slap Keely for not recognizing that their "friendship" had become toxic and it was time to move on. It's not like Keely didn't have any friends besides Isabelle! Why she kept clinging to Isabelle and the rest of the Maxwells was puzzling to me because they really didn't seem that great. Keely didn't seem to appreciate how great her own parents were, either. So what if the Greens didn't have as big of a house as the Maxwells, or if they never had any pets because her parents were allergic? Those were such stupidly petty things to complain about that, again, I wanted to slap Keely for complaining about them.

As for Sebastian, he seemed to keep Keely dangling on a string for years and she just kept coming back for more. Except for one time when he was a freshman in college, he never went out of his way to contact her. Basically, unless she was standing right in front of him, it didn't seem like he even thought about her, despite his protestations to the contrary. Sebastian only decided to pursue a romantic relationship with Keely when it was finally convenient for him, after he broke up with his Swedish girlfriend and moved back to the island full-time. That was fine with Keely, apparently, since she was still so desperate to be a part of the "wonderful" Maxwell family.

Then there was the Keely-Tommy-Isabelle love triangle. What a ridiculous saga that was! I couldn't figure out why Keely even wanted Tommy in the first place - maybe just because Isabelle wanted him and had him first? How much could Keely really have wanted to be friends with Isabelle by that point anyway if her idea of "friendship" allowed her to start dating her supposed BFF's ex the day after they broke up? I'm not saying that what Isabelle and Tommy did was right, but Keely's behavior wasn't exactly perfect either.

There were plenty of other things that annoyed me about this book, but this review is already way too long. Bottom line: I was really disappointed with "Surfside Sisters," though the writing itself was decent and I was interested enough in what would happen next to keep reading to the end. I would give another one of Nancy Thayer's books a shot in the future. Hopefully the characters and storyline will be less frustrating!

*ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

View all my reviews