Book Notes: Twisted Sisterhood

The Twisted Sisterhood: Unraveling the Dark Legacy of Female Friendships by Kelly Valen

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This book rambled on and on at the surface of interest without digging deep into content. The most interesting asset to the book was discussing its content with a small group of women. Essentially, the author wrote a newspaper article asserting women’s relationships are nasty, and then she did a large scale online survey with 2,000 respondents seemingly confirming women are nasty to other women. The book was rife with inserted examples from her survey to illustrate her point that woman suck. Otherwise her information is not substantial, she does not do a “call to arms” that is powerful, and barely mentions the benefits of female friendships. I believe the point of simplicity and lack of details is to make it applicable to all. However, keeping it so broad did little to make it an appealing read. I read over half the book, and it felt like an introduction at first, as it went on and on I then thought it was like a college-level paper. I kept reading with the sole purpose of getting to meatier content. According to the ONE book club member that did finish the book, the discourse does not change.

Personally I didn’t believe in the negative tone of the book. I think you CAN have positive, fulfilling female friendships and you CAN avoid drama. I had a hard time thinking of female bullying, mean girls, etc., probably because I flew below the radar for all of school, and didn’t even try to “be cool” or “fit in.” I would recommend this book for discussion, but save yourself some time, and just read the first 20 pages or so.




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