the sisterhood of the traveling pants book 1

The girls separate again, taking last summer’s lessons and the jeans with them again. The second book follows a similar passage.

They decide to form the Sisterhood and share the jeans between them, because surely wearing magic jeans will make magic things happen. In a last minute shopping trip, they discover a pair of jeans that miraculously fits them all perfectly, even though they are all different sizes and shapes. Book 1, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants details the girls during the first summer they’ve ever spent apart. Bridget is a star athlete, and “single-minded to the point of recklessness.” Lena, an artist, is as shy as she is beautiful, and Tibby is ironic, brilliant and an amateur filmmaker. Carmen is a vivacious Puerto Rican with a bit of a temper. The four novels follow the summers of four girls who have been friends since before they were born. I’m also intensely jealous of, but excited for, others who have not yet been introduced to Brashares and get to discover her for themselves. Now that I’ve finished, I have that strange mixture of joy and sadness, having read something wonderful, but knowing that I’ll never get to read it for the first time again. When the fourth – and final – story came out in January of this year, I was there to get my copy, though I put off reading it for a couple of weeks, just so I could hold onto that “It’s not over yet!” feeling a little longer. I devoured the first book in one night, then danced with joy at the news of the two sequels already in book stores.

So if Jen was affected, who was I to argue? She then sent me a copy in the mail with the inscription “This is how I feel about you.” Of the two of us, I’m the mushy one likely to descend into maudlin declarations of BFF. Thank God for my best friend, much more open-minded than me, who picked it up.

The title hit me as stupid, as did the premise: four friends joined together by a pair of jeans? Even the back blurb wasn’t promising, coming across as saccharine and uninspired. When The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants first came out, I wasn’t going to read it. Desert Island Keeper reviews are hardest of all. DIK status has never been questioned, but to put into words the sheer depth of the emotional content, characters, and stories is nearly impossible without descending into that embarrassing land of “gush.” A truth universally acknowledged: bad reviews are easier to write than good. Sitting down to write a DIK series review for Ann Brashares’s compelling Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants quartet has been harder than expected.

The sisterhood of the traveling pants book 1