The Pearl Sister (The Seven Sisters, 4)

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The Dreaming is the beginning of everything, the ‘time before time’. The Ancestor Beings (usually half-animal, half-human in appearance) emerged out of the earth, in darkness, onto a completely flat landscape. With them, the sun emerged and flooded everything in light, so the Ancestors could see where they travelled as they began to create all the rivers and mountains, trees, and valleys. Then they made all the people, animals and plants. They made Water, Air, Earth and Fire, and lastly, they made the Moon and the Stars. Cuarta entrega de la serie de las siete hermanas. Había leído alguna que otra reseña que decían que era la parte más floja de las cuatro y a mi en cambio, ha sido una de mis favoritas y eso que CeCe, la hermana en la que está centrada esta historia, es la que menos me convencía de todas. I must have fallen asleep, because I had the spider nightmare and woke myself up screaming, automatically clapping a hand to my mouth to shut myself up in case someone along the corridor thought I was being murdered. I decided I just couldn’t stay in this soulless room any longer by myself, so I put on my boots, grabbed my camera, and took the lift down to reception.

Hoover is one of the freshest voices in new-adult fiction, and her latest resonates with true emotion, unforgettable characters and just the right amount of sexual tension. However, I could create beauty, and now, at my lowest ebb, I remembered something else that Pa had once said to me when I was younger.

Do you think that Ace’s father David Rutter should stand trial for his actions, or that he will ‘get what’s coming to him’ with the Roseate Pearl, as CeCe predicts. CeCe D’Aplièse has never felt she fitted in anywhere. Following the death of her father, the elusive billionaire Pa Salt – so-called by the six daughters he adopted from around the globe and named after the Seven Sisters star cluster – she finds herself at breaking point. Dropping out of art college, CeCe watches as Star, her beloved sister, distances herself to follow her new love, leaving her completely alone. Different Aboriginal language groups around Australia each have their own stories, sacred places and spiritual beliefs, but they are all connected through the Dreaming. Many of the characters in ‘The Pearl Sister’ have more than one racial and national identity, such as CeCe, Ace, and Francis. How do they come to terms with their identities?

I mentioned this before, but CeCe really annoyed me in the previous three books. However, as I'd hoped, getting her story made me fall in love with her and I might even go as far to say she is now my favourite sister! CeCe's journey was fantastic. There's a section in Thailand, before she heads to Australia to find out her family history. The youngest of the D'Aplièse sisters, Electra, known for her fiery temper, has always been outspoken and a rebel. Now one of the world's most successful supermodels, she is living in New York, away from her sisters, and is struggling to cope with both the death of Pa Salt and the break up of a relationship. Turning further to drugs and alcohol, she then, she receives a mysterious letter from a woman claiming to be her biological grandmother and her life takes an unexpected turn… Spanning continents and decades, this is a well-researched and compelling novel on an epic scale. -- Sunday Express At least I learned what I wasn’t good at, I comforted myself. Which, according to my tutors, was most of the modules I’d taken in the past three months.

Summary

CeCe D’Aplièse is up this time, and having found her a little dislikeable in the previous book I was interested to read of the origins of this adopted woman’s blood lineage. This is a character who has already displayed quite a strong personality, so much so that she had pretty much took over the running of her closest sisters Skye’s life, but that changed in the previous book; The Shadow Sister as Skye discovered her past, and met her future, a future that didn’t solely revolve around doing what CeCe thought was best for them as a duo.

The Dreaming stories are passed on through songs, dances, ceremonies and storytelling, and this is how CeCe is told of their origins by her grandfather – an elder – in ‘The Pearl Sister’. In ‘The Pearl Sister’, many family members are reunited – Camira with her grandson Francis, and Kitty and her half-brother Ralph. Do you believe that kin recognises kin? Is there a special bond between blood relatives even if they have never met before? I love stories set in the hot, dusty parts of Australia. It's a place I like to visit via books but have no desire to actually go in real life - I don't think I'd handle the heat, the dust or the flies. I really enjoyed following along as CeCe learned more about her heritage, especially the information I got about Aboriginal art. I Googled the artists mentioned and the work was incredible, though I'm sure even more impressive in person rather than a phone screen! I shuddered, remembering my teenage plane companion’s parting words . . . They couldn’t really be the size of dinner plates in Australia, could they? It was almost like seeing the world upside down, because the lights below the plane resembled less brilliant facsimiles of the stars above me. This reminded me of the fact that one of my tutors at art college had once told me that I painted as if I couldn’t see what was in front of me. He was right. I couldn’t. The pictures appeared in my mind, not in reality. Often, they didn’t take animal, mineral, or even human form, but the images were strong, and I always felt compelled to follow them through.Riley is survived by Stephen, their two children, Leonora and Kit, the two children of her first marriage, Harry and Bella, and three stepchildren, Olivia, William and Max, as well as her mother and her sister, Georgia.

Now here I was, no farther on than this time last year when I’d sat next to my sister in economy class, flying across the world to Thailand. Except this time Star wasn’t with me, and I wasn’t running to something, I was running away . . . You pressed the call bell,” she said in an exaggerated whisper, indicating the rest of the passengers, who were all asleep. After all, it was four in the morning, London time. Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past. En este caso, CeCe se pondrá en búsqueda de sus orígenes, lo que le llevará a investigar sobre Kitty, una de las mujeres perleras más importantes de Australia y con la que al parecer está emparentada. Para ello, recorreremos gran parte de Australia y conoceremos tanto detalles de su arte como la pintura y su pintor más famoso a múltiples historias y costumbres de los aborígenes. Y la verdad, es que todo ello me ha resultado sumamente interesante.At the time, I thought it was just another—what’s the word Star would use?—platitude to make up for the fact that I was basically crap looks-wise, crap academically, and crap with people. And actually, Pa was wrong, because even if other people couldn’t take talent away from you, they could destroy your confidence with their negative comments and mess with your brain, so you didn’t know who you were anymore or how to please anyone, least of all yourself. That was what had happened to me on my art course. Which was why I’d left.