Set in the South Carolina Lowcountry and packed with Southern charm and memorable characters, Her Sister’s Shoes is the story of three sisters—Samantha, Jackie, and Faith—who struggle to balance the demands of career and family while remaining true to themselves.

Samantha Sweeney has always been the glue that holds her family together, their go-to girl for love and support. When an ATV accident leaves her teenage son in a wheelchair, she loses her carefully constructed self-control.

In the after-gloom of her dreaded fiftieth birthday and the discovery of her husband’s infidelity, Jackie realizes she must reconnect with her former self to find the happiness she needs to move forward.

Faith lacks the courage to stand up to her abusive husband. She turns to her sisters for help, placing all their lives at risk.

In the midst of their individual challenges, the Sweeney sisters must cope with their mother’s mental decline. Is Lovie in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, or is her odd behavior normal for a woman her age? No one, including Lovie, understands her obsession with a rusty key she wears around her neck.

For fans of Elin Hildebrand, Her Sister’s Shoes is a contemporary women’s novel that explores and proves the healing power of family.

When it comes to family matters, there’s no denying that as much as you love them, they can drive you nuts. For Sam, Faith and Jackie, their sisterly bond isn’t exactly what you would call strong. In fact, the three sister differ from one another so completely, you could almost think that weren’t related. However different their personalities and strained their relationship may be, they’ve all managed to remain in their hometown of Prospect.

For Sam, the challenges in her life are weighing heavily on her. In the months since her son’s accident, that killed his best friend and put him in a wheel chair, she’s been doing everything in her power to convince her son to keep the will to live. Especially after the doctors begin to tell her, he can walk, but something psychological won’t allow him to. On top of that, she carries the burden of running the family business. But after decades of the same and with the desperate need of fixing some structural issues, she decides to take a risk and completely revamp the design of the store. A choice that could really break the business if it’s not well received with the locals and cost them the legacy their parents left them. Add on to that, her mother declining mentality and the other issues that are brought forth with her sisters and she may have just come to her breaking point.

For Faith, her problems lie with her loser, dead beat husband. Unemployed and an alcoholic, Curtis has become crueler and more neglectful of their young daughter. Worst than that, she has to live with the illegal actions he forced her to commit, in order to keep a roof over their head. But when she tries to leave, his cruelty hits an all time high, one that will effect the entire family throughout the course of this book.

As for Jackie, it’s not so easy to constantly pretend to be the envy of everyone in town, when your husband is fooling around on you. After years of being selfish and neglectful of her family, Jackie finds herself spiraling after discovering her husband’s betrayal. Of course, this leaves her far too enthralled with her own issues to even notice, let alone care about her sister’s situations or her elderly mother’s health.

For the sake of not spoiling anything, I have to keep my opinions of the book to a minimum. Though it’s a decent sized story, the events that take place, do so only in a matter of a few short weeks. However, I will say that I enjoyed the fact the sisters didn’t have that cookie cutter relationship. It helped with the realism of the story and I think it also aided in allowing each of them to have their own different voice throughout the tale. Though they all annoyed me at one point or another, I truly was rooting for all of them to find their way out of the messes in their lives. Sadly, I have to say I felt the most sympathy for Sam, as none of the issues she encountered were of her own making. She truly was stuck with the weight of the family’s welfare on her shoulders and I can’t imagine that is an easy burden to bare. Jackie annoyed me the most, as she was truly a self-centered character and I don’t always have the greatest patience with those kinds of characters. I also suppose I was highly offended by some of the things she thinks and says, thus adding to her annoyance. After all, who thinks something along the lines of “at least I had the common decency to not intrude on my sister when her son nearly died?” That kind of callous attitude would have earned her a black eye from me, had she been my sister.

Despite the few annoyances I had with the sisters and the fact I felt a little “too” much was going on in the book for such a short story and short time frame, I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it. It’s steady paced and before you realize it, you’re kind of invested in these women’s lives. Sure, it could have had one less dramatic moment and still worked out well enough. But it works out well and it’s a great read. Check it out for yourself!

Reviewer’s note: I received this book in exchange for an honest review.

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