Stephanie Sullivan: Review - The Griffin Sisters’ Greatest Hits

TITLE: The Griffin Sisters’ Greatest Hits (audiobook)

RATING: ★★★

Summary (from Goodreads): Sisters Cassie and Zoe Grossberg were born just a year apart but could not have been more different. Zoe, blessed with charm and beauty, yearned for fame from the moment she could sing into a hairbrush. Cassie was a musical prodigy who never felt at home in her own skin and preferred the safety of the shadows.

On the brink of adulthood in the early 2000s, destiny intervened, catapulting the sisters into the spotlight as the pop sensation the Griffin Sisters, hitting all the touchstones of early aughts fame—SNL, MTV, Rolling Stone magazine—along the way.

But after a whirlwind year in the public eye, the band abruptly broke up.

Two decades later, Zoe’s a housewife; Cassie’s off the grid. The sisters aren’t speaking, and the real reason for the Griffin Sisters’ breakup is still a mystery. Zoe’s teenage daughter, Cherry, who’s determined to be a star in spite of Zoe’s warnings, is on a quest to learn the truth about what happened to the band all those years ago.

As secrets emerge, all three women must face the consequences of their choices: the ones they made and the ones the music industry made for them. Can they forgive each other—and themselves? And will the Griffin Sisters ever make music again?

REVIEW: I’ve read several of Jennifer Weiner’s books, and one thing I’ve noticed that’s true in most (all?) of her stories is there’s always a big girl. Now, don’t get me wrong - I have nothing whatsoever against that. I’m a big girl myself, and so I really appreciate when an author includes a plus-sized heroine in their book. The problem, for me, starts when the author focuses TOO MUCH negative attention on the heroine’s size, which was the case with this book. Every other sentence is either Cassie (the character in question) thinking horribly about herself because of her weight or some other character saying horrible things about her weight. Believe me, I can truly understand Cassie’s lack of self-esteem and self-confidence about her body, but the negativity in this book was too over the top for my liking. Neither of the sisters, Cassie and Zoe, have any redeeming qualities. Cassie lets people walk all over her because she thinks she deserves it, for some strange reason, and Zoe is the entitled one who’s gorgeous and uses that to manipulate everyone around her. Those are my main gripes with The Griffin Sisters’ Greatest Hits. It had the potential to be a wonderful story, but it leans heavily toward Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones and the Six. The way the characters talk and dress feel like it should be set in the late 70s or early 80s and not 2003 and 2024. (And Cassie resembles the late singer Mama Cass so much in this story it’s hard to differentiate the two). I wanted to stop listening halfway through this audiobook, and the only thing that kept me going was Dakota Fanning, who is a great narrator. If you enjoy books with a bunch of family dynamics and the love/hate relationship between sisters, then you will probably love this book, but it was, unfortunately, a big miss for me. Fingers crossed Weiner’s next book will be a bit more uplifting and positive.

(DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this title from NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own).