Virginia Smith's Sister-to-Sister Series

The Sister-to-Sister trilogy tells the stories of the Sanderson sisters. They're young, contemporary women dealing with the same issues young women have always dealt with---like their love life, sibling rivalry, and the generation gap. In addition, they also must resolve conflicts between work and home, work and ethical conduct, personal goals and family responsibilities. By the time you read all three books, you will have experienced just about every conflict a young woman faces in her quest for fulfillment.

Each character has unresolved issues in her relationship to God, along with the other challenges. Their father abandoned the family when they were young, and they all have difficulty coping with that. All of the books offer study guides so that they can be used for group study.

In Stuck in the Middle, we share Joan's plight. In the middle, age-wise, she's also between romantic relationships. She's stuck at the family home with her mother and her ditzy grandmother. But, a new neighbor moves in, a doctor who has an unusual companion. And the suspense builds from there.

Age before Beauty is about Allie, the oldest sister. She's married and has a baby that everyone in the family dotes on. She's supposed to go back to work at her old job soon. She experiments with a work-at-home job during her family leave period only to find herself stressed out and wondering if her husband is interested in another woman.

In the final book, Third Time's a Charm, Tori, the clothes horse-shopaholic-career woman is featured. She tries to be loyal to family while working extended hours to earn a promotion at work. Her love life gets complicated, too. As the youngest, she seems to have been more deeply affected by the absence of their father than the older ones. She becomes the catalyst for all three sisters' dealing with it once and for all.

I was surprised that I liked these books. First, I'm not an avid fiction-reader. Second, I'm well past the age of the heroines. Not interested in Chick Lit. I will admit that the only reason I read the first one was because I have worked with Virginia Smith at Kentucky Christian Writers Conference. Once I finished the first one, I couldn't wait to read the next and the next. Smith's writing is lively and humorous. The characters come to life for me---so much so that I could identify people in my life who were like her characters.

Visit Virginia's Web site for details on this series and her other books. She will be featured speaker and fiction workshop leaders this summer at the Kentucky conference, June 11-12.

Disclaimer: I purchased these books myself. My working relationship with Smith in no way influenced my opinion. I would not have read the second and third books if the first one had not impressed me.