BOOKWORM PROBLEMS – BOOKISH PET PEEVES!

Hello people! I hope that your week has started in the best possible way! Today I am here with something a little different: usually, I love to read discussion posts around the community, but I don’t write them, mainly because I am lazy and every time I think about something that I want to discuss with you all, I soon talk myself out of it. But lately, there is this idea that kept coming around and around, about things that I want to share and discuss with you all, so in the end, I surrendered and now I am here, giving it a try!

So, to start this meme, that I really hope would keep us company for a while, I have chosen a topic that lately is tormenting me, and I am talking about my most recent, and really really felt, pet peeve.
Ready to discover it? Drums roll, please!!
Sisters!

Yep, lately, I am really really irritated by sisters in books. It is not a siblings thing in general, if we have brothers, or a brother and a sister, all is good in the world. But sister with sister… nope! I can’t understand why, when we have two (or more sisters) in a book their relationship is always unbalanced and one (or more) of the sisters drags down the MC. It is not important if the sisters are older or younger, in the end, the sister(s) of the MC is there for one reason and one reason only: to drag down the MC.
In the beginning, I suspected that what was irking me was the inspiration from Pride & Prejudice, where Lizzy’s sisters are quite a burden, so to speak, and usually in all the retellings or books that are inspired by this novel we have a more caricatured version of the sisters. (And the mother! Irking too!). And this was the beginning for me. I started having a hard and harder time at every book like this I read. And then things expanded.
Because it is not only books that are inspired by Austen’s work that have this peculiar thing. The problem is in almost all the books with sisters in them. And I am having a hard time mentioning one book in which we have sisters with a decent relationship. The only one that came to mind is the Zodiac Academy series. The two MCs are twins and are girls. And they have an amazing relationship.

It is a trope more common in historical romances, that’s true, but it is not said. I recently read The Hawthorne Legacy and this is set in the present. We have our MC and her older sister. The older sister is so good-hearted that her goodness almost became stupidity. Really, because she can’t see reality as it is but a rose-tinted version of it, she almost gets her sister killed. Once in this book and once in the one before, maybe. I am not so sure about this at the moment, but once is enough! And around them we have a really dysfunctional family, but the brothers, that are the other MC, have a brotherly relationship. Sure, sometimes it is really hard to say if they like or hate each other. But the relationship is way more balanced than the one between the two sisters!

And then we have the best of the best in historical romances. In Never Fall For Your Fiancee the MC risks her happiness, her monetary stability, and her love life for a sister that lives in her own world. Sure, they had a really hard life up to the point in which the story starts, and since she is the younger one she is the most cuddled. And this is comprehensible, but she risks everything because her sister lives in a world of her invention and the MC loves her so much that can’t do anything about it. But really, letting a dear one be delusional is highly dangerous, and not a sign of love! And mind me, I enjoyed this one pretty much, but at the end of the book, I had an enormous headache because of all the eyes-rolls! In Scales and Sensibility, another book that I really enjoyed, we don’t meet the MC’s sisters, but she is doing a really shitty life (excuse my French) because she has to endure it and think about her sisters’ well-being. (It is a tad more complicated than this, but still, you get the idea!). Shades of Milk and Honey was a disappointing reading. I was hoping to love this book and instead I just had a nice time, but I am not even sure that I want to go on with the series. And all because of the sisters of the MC. And then, last but not least, there is Miss Percy’s Pocket Guide To The Care And Feeding Of British Dragons with which I have a start and stop relationship. I read something like 10/20 pages and then I have to stop and go read something else, because of the sister of the MC who is patronizing and controlling, but since she is the MC sister has every right, and the MC has no right to wish for more from her life.

All the books I have mentioned here are amazing books, but every time I found something like that my annoyance grows. At the beginning it was just an itch, now it is like a blaze. I start to groan internally, roll my eyes and I have a hard time enjoying my reading. And I keep wondering because two sisters can’t have a normal, balanced relationship, in which we don’t have a dominant personality and a more “weak” one, and in which the weak one doesn’t keep the power in her hands because of emotional blackmail. I don’t think I am asking for much!!!

And this is all for today! What about you? Have you some books with a good sisters relationship in it to recommend? And what is your most recent bookish pet peeve?? Let me know!!!

Happy reading!
S.