REVIEW: The Sister’s We Were by Wendy Willis Baldwin

The Sister’s We Were by Wendy Willis Baldwin: While not a straight up romance, The Sister’s We Were is very much indeed a book about love, self-love, sibling love and the complexity of family love. Pearl, for the most part of her life has struggled with her weight, a product of her using food to self-soothe. And naturally, her older sister Ruby is everything but overweight – thin, athletic, successful. And despite Ruby being Pearls strongest advocate when they were children, it seems, time, trauma and family breakdown have taken their toll on Pearl and their bond as sisters.

Weighing in at 531 pounds, around 240kg, Pearl comes to the harsh realisation that if she doesn’t do something severe, she is very likely going to eat herself to death. And clinging on to that shred of self-value and personal preservation, she books herself into the local Austin Weight loss centre to schedule bariatric surgery. Encouraged by her mother Birdie who calls twice a week from prison, Pearl works through the first few hoops to hopefully change the trajectory of her life – except of course, it requires her now estranged sister Ruby to care for her post-op. Without warning though, Ruby is arriving a month earlier than planned and it is clear the siblings need to begin the really hard work of finding a way to love each other again, and hopefully find pockets of forgiveness along the way.

Mostly, this was a gentle read positioned from a warm, and soft woman who had to find the strength and courage to understand the gravity of living with her significant childhood traumas. Exploring guilt, shame, abandonment, loss, and abuse, at no juncture did the narrative voice become too dark or tricky despite the heaviness of the themes. Given the narrative is prefaced with some personal insight from the author, Pearl’s story is automatically positioned sympathetically, and even though there were many moments that were cringe worthy or out-right humiliating, it never came close to baring bones and all. Throughout, some clean language choices and the flashback structure enabled contextualisation and what sung loudly was the importance of sisterhood, advocacy, and how powerful it is to have allies in your life who are loyal, supportive and trusted. And in essence, despite the book focusing predominantly on Pearl’s weight loss journey, it was more in fact about how two sisters could find a way back to each other again.

On the whole, this was a clever read that will no doubt inspire many women to wrap there arms tighter around each other, and find a way to meet each other half-way so that both can be as strong as the other.

Book Info:

Publication: 17th January | Sourcebooks Landmarks |

The weight of their family secrets could not have shaped Pearl and Ruby Crenshaw any differently. Ruby’s a runner, living in Dallas and only reluctantly talking to their mother, Birdie, when she calls from prison. Pearl is still living in her mother’s fixer-upper and finds herself facing a line in the sand: her weight is threatening to kill her. She’s hundreds of pounds beyond the point where she can celebrate her curves or benefit from the body positivity movement, and unless she takes drastic action, the future looks dire.

But when Ruby’s buried rage explodes in a hilariously viral way, the mistake has life-altering consequences. Now the sisters are back living under the same roof and forced to put the pieces of their separate lives together again. Funny, cinematic, and bursting with heart, this is a story of hope and redemption that celebrates the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood.