Coco Mellors’ Blue Sisters is the latest pick for Jenna Bush Hager’s Today show book club.
Mellors’ novel, published Tuesday by Ballantine, follows three sisters who gather in New York a year after their other sister died, to try to stop the apartment they grew up in from being sold. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “One does come to agree with the characters that the most likable of the group has been killed off.”
Hager announced the book’s selection on the Today show, saying, “Not since my mama read me Little Women have I loved a book about sisterhood this much.…I loved this book. It’s about resilience and rediscovering joy, so read it with me, y’all.”
Mellors told Today.com that her book is “a modern day Little Women meets The Royal Tenenbaums.”
“I was interested in writing sisters that are exceptionally different within one family,” she said. “The lawyer, the boxer, the model—these are careers I’ve never had, and they’re character types that don’t totally align with my own. Part of the fun was imagining that.”
She said that she learned her book would be selected for Hager’s club while she was in the hospital after undergoing a C-section.
“My agent was like, So sorry to bother, I know you’re in the middle of things,” she recalled. “I was like, literally still on an IV. She was like, I have some great news, which is that you have been chosen! And I was like, Yay! and my husband was like, Don’t move! Your blood pressure!”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
