Simply Love Book Reviews's Reviews > The Lemon Sisters

The Lemon Sisters is the third stand alone book in Jill Shalvis’ Wildstone “series” and yes I use the term series lightly because while they all take place in Wildstone for the most part we don’t “see” the characters from the previous books. I’ve enjoyed this women’s fiction with romantic elements series, the second book in particular was fantastic, however this book is my least favorite of the series. The Lemon Sisters is about two sisters who are a bit estranged finding not only their way back in to each other’s lives but for one a way to reclaim her marriage and the other to make amends for her past. In Ms. Shalvis’ signature style this book contained humor, emotion, romantic elements, and some family drama, it unfortunately also contained references to overused internet memes which has become a “thing” for this author and in my opinion not a good thing.

Brooke has been living her live in Los Angeles while producing an extreme travel show and basically hiding from her family and her past. Granted there’s a reason for it and while she is basically hiding from her painful past when her “perfect” sister Mindy shows up on her doorstep with her three children needing a marital and mommy break leaving Brooke to pick up the pieces while spending a lot of time with her niece and two nephews something she’s been avoiding. I’ll come right out and say that the three kids in this book kind of stole every scene they were in, there was no doubt they were kids and they did some crazy and outrageous things, but they were simply being kids which I loved seeing.

While Mindy takes a life time out in Brooke’s L.A. apartment, Brooke returns to her hometown of Wildstone with the kids in tow to confront the man from her past, her sister’s clueless husband, and get to know her niece and nephews. I quite loved Brooke’s interactions with the kids and how she just kind of rolled with everything that happened while she was in charge and how she refused to answer Mindy’s constant texts, emails, and phone calls or follow the “schedule” that Mindy had in place for their family. Brooke was a bit of a mess from an accident 7 years prior and one of the things she wanted to do was be able to talk with Garrett the man she left behind, she just didn’t realize that he now lived next door to her sister and was constantly around since he was remodeling their home. While I appreciated that the attraction between them was still there and neither one was set to act on it, the push/pull between them after awhile got on my nerves. I get they had things to work through, but about three-fourths the way through the book I was convinced they really didn’t need to be together again because they kept taking one step forward then two back. As a reader it frustrated me and I felt so much of the angst wasn’t necessary. Mindy and Linc’s marriage is falling apart mainly because Mindy is overworked and Linc is clueless which also turned me off. I hate when men are written as completely clueless about what their wife does and seemingly has no clue how to take care of his children especially when the oldest one is 8. It’s as bad as people asking a dad if they are babysitting their children, the answer is no, he’s parenting them. Both couples had major communication problems and while I can excuse Brooke and Garrett’s to some degree, the fact that Mindy never saw fit to sit her husband down and tell him she needed help from him or the fact he was so out of touch with his family made me again question if they should be together. I was disappointed that I felt that way about both of these couples throughout most of this book.

While there were moments in this book I thoroughly enjoyed and I was happy with the outcome once I waded through all the drama to get there, The Lemon Sisters was a bit of a disappointment for me and in my opinion, not one of this author’s best efforts.