Genre(s): Contemporary Fiction, Straight Books with Lesbian Characters
Pages: 288
Website: http://www.urbanbooks.net/angel.html
Rating: 
Sequels usually take off where the last novel begins, hopefully with the characters wiser than they were before. This is the case with SISTER GIRLS 2, but author Angel M. Hunter offers a twist from its predecessor by adding new women to the mix.
Wrestling with her sexuality in the last book, Elsie is back with a new job and different goals. She begins Essence of Self, a non-profit organization to benefit young women, and spends most of her time thinking about being a mother. While her biological clock ticks away, Elsie begins realize she made a mistake by letting go of her ex, Summer, and her young daughter. If she hadn’t broken it off, Elsie cold have had the family she wanted. Can she finally make things right between them?
Faith is the counselor employed at Essence, who might need a therapist of her own. She advises women on their issues, but comes home to an empty marriage with her husband Raheem. He saved her from the destructive path she once lived, and will never let her forget it. When she meets a man who loves the new woman she’s become, is it too late for her to save her marriage?
Harmony, the new receptionist at Essence, sees her job as a fresh start. Tired of working dead-end jobs, she wants to make something of herself, and give her three children a better life. Though they all have separate daddies, her boyfriend Shareef has been there for all of them. He wants to give Harmony the world, but she can’t appreciate all he does for their family. Will she figure out that Shareef is truly there for her?
Last but not least is Pastor Bella Gold, who provides a spiritual influence for the center. She struggles with her own demons from her past. Running a church is a responsibility she takes seriously, and feels if her congregation will never accept whom she was before. It gets more complicated when a face from her former days shows up in her pews. Has he come to ruin her chance for redemption?
Hunter’s Sister Girls 2, just like its original, presents readers with four women with pasts they can’t run from. They have to face the truth about their lives, no matter how painful. Unlike Sister Girls, though, it seemed as if the women were more disjointed, but they pull together by the novel’s close. Hunter dug deeper into her characters this time, and it made the experience a little more sisterly.
Reviewed May 2008