The Chicken Sisters

This was not my favourite book that Reese has recommended in her book club. Both the main characters are super unlikable. The one becomes OK throughout the book, but the other one gets worse. The ending felt a little rushed and kind of just glazed over the issues. Its an okay read, and can be read fairly quickly. Its kind of got a hallmark movie vibe to it.

I am in the minority here, but this book was AWFUL. NONE of the characters were like able and the writing was horrible too. The author would switch between 2 characters but sometimes the next chapter went backwards to an earlier time and other times it was in line with the story so you had to figure it out. She should have made the chapters smaller so it flowed more easily.

I liked the book but it fell short for me. I thought the story line of two family owned chicken restaurants battling on Food Wars was a clever idea. I felt it had loads of opportunity for humorous restaurant mishaps but everything that went down was just spiteful on both sides. While back and forth spitefulness might make for a good story, a little levity would have gone a long way. I found the two main characters overly self centered who could not see past their own personal gains to the point of where they were unlikeable. Again, some humor inserted into all the pettiness and cattiness may have been helpful. This might play out better as a movie, though.

I expected to enjoy this book as a family tension gets resolved, with maybe a bit of romance on the side, but this book turned out to be a deeper, more poignant story. The characters are flawed and messy, yet hopeful and real. The story has all the right tension, messed-up plans, good intentions gone wrong but with more depth of character than you expect. And very well written. I definitely recommend!

I live in southeast Kansas near Frontenac, home of the chicken shacks that inspired the novel (Chicken Annie’s and Chicken Mary’s). I was excited to read this book, but disappointed by it and had a very hard time getting through it.

The details of the locale and setting are a mess. The author sets the fictional Merinac at varying times in both northeast and southeast Kansas. She describes Merinac as so small it doesn’t have a bar, yet somehow it does have 3 chain grocery stores, a QuikTrip gas station, a Starbucks, and a fancy local coffee shop. In reality, Frontenac (pop 3437) has a couple of bars but NONE of those other businesses. Even if the setting were entirely fictional, it would still be important to make it believable. It’s easy enough to get accurate details with a simple Google search; failing to do so indicates sloppy writing and editing.

Like other reviewers, I found the cookie-cutter characters unlikable and poorly developed. Their speaking styles are all the same.

The scenes are confusing and lack grounding, so everyone seems to just be running from one place to another. Several scenes are repeats (and repeats of repeats) of information to get all the players on the same page. A good editor could implement ways to get around this instead of letting the action bog down.

Time is very wonky in Merinac – uttering a brief sentence takes so long your coffee will get cold, but a couple of people can clean, repaint, and landscape a severely neglected restaurant in just a few hours.

An inordinate amount of scenes are given to using social media and explaining it to the reader. Supposedly a B&B/coffee shop in this out-of-the-way small town has a huge social media presence (one of the biggest in the state!). Again, this is unrealistic and unnecessary to the story. And boring.

The storyline is predictable and the ending is anticlimactic.

I’m sympathetic to the author being a first time novelist. My annoyance is directed mostly at the publisher for allowing subpar editing and for launching a Nanowrimo book that needed easily another couple of drafts.

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