I am getting sad thinking about this series ending. The Sun Sister is the 6th book in this series of 7. Book 7 is expected to be published in Spring 2021. So now I wait..... This was the longest book so far (at 637 pages), but I again read it pretty quickly due to my interest level, which made it hard to put down. The 6th sister is named Electra. She is a black super model, with significant drug and alcohol addictions, who lives in New York (Manhattan). It was hard to read about her alcohol and drug use. It's amazing what the body can endure day after day. She also slept around a lot. She seemed to have a difficult time just spending time with herself. She was extremely self-involved and self-centered (and not in a good way). She pretty much treated people like crap. She hadn't even read her letter from Pa Salt, or looked at the coordinates of her birthplace, or opened the envelope that held the translation of the "words of wisdom" that had been left for her by Pa Salt. Her addictions were her undoing (finally!) and she goes to rehab and starts the long process of turning her life around. She only becomes interested in her history after her birth grandmother contacts her and asks to meet.
Her ancestry story was really interesting because it was set in Kenya before World War II affected Africa (1939). This story centered around a white woman named Cecily Huntley-Morgan, a young woman from a wealthy New York family. As Electra's beautiful black grandmother shares Electra's history of origin with her, Electra kept wondering where she and her mother fit into the story. So did I! Cecily ends up in Kenya because she is invited to visit her socialite godmother, Kiki, who is Cecily's mother's best friend. She was also adventurous, promiscuous, unreliable and a really bad role model! She was a huge part of the Happy Valley set in Kenya. Cecily decides to visit Kiki to get away from her ex-fiancé who breaks off their engagement shortly before their wedding to marry someone else. Cecily ends up marrying an older British man who owns a cattle farm in Kenya (which is a long story so I won't get into the details here).
Although each sister in this series ends up being a better person by the end of their individual stories, their origin stories often have sad parts and this story was no exception. I realize that reality involves a lot of turmoil and sadness at times, but I am always sad when a main character dies too young! Not only did the book involve the effects of World War II and addiction, but also extreme prejudice against black people, both in Kenya and New York. Cecily and her husband, Bill, also had a difficult time expressing their true feelings with each other, which makes for a sad story involving their marriage as well.
This was the first book that I really started thinking that Pa Salt might actually be dead. The way he was talked about in this book by various people, including Ma, made it seem like he really did die. But there are obviously many secrets that we are waiting to have explained in Book 7, so you never know! When Georg Hoffman visits Atlantis suddenly at the very end of the book with "news", I thought it would be about Pa Salt. But no. He announces that he has finally found the 7th sister, who has been "missing" since the beginning. "Missing", meaning "never found".
It's going to be a difficult wait for Book 7!
Wendy's Rating: *****
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