4.5-STAR REVIEW: SISTER ACTS by Sharon Adelman Reyes

Publication Date: August 6, 2025

​Four sisters. Four clashing personalities. Four different ways of living in the world.

Sister Acts explores the impact of loss on three generations of one family –- in particular, the degree to which, to paraphrase Phyllis Chesler, women are capable of inhumanity toward other women. At times heartbreaking and at times hilarious, the novel illuminates the resilience that can come from knowing one’s roots and the estrangement that can result from trying to escape them.

Sophie Malinsky’s sudden death leaves her Left-wing Jewish family in disarray. Rather than bringing her young daughters closer, the loss creates a tangle of jealousies and recriminations. Rose, the eldest, recognizing their father’s limitations, at first tries to become a surrogate mother for her three sisters. But they resent her efforts, each one channeling – or repressing – her grief in a different way. In the absence of Sophie’s love and guidance, two sisters lose their way. Naomi moves to Mexico and tries to shed her Jewish identity. Betti ends up in Nashville pursuing a dream, never realized, of stardom as a rockabilly musician. A fourth sister, Marla, strives for dominance from an early age. Her jealousy of Rose leads to a toxic rivalry that persists well into middle age, affecting their own daughters as well. Lurking behind the conflicts is a family secret that Sophie had planned, but failed, to reveal. Decades later, when Rose finally uncovers it, the Malinskys’ saga finally comes into sharp focus.

Even as children, the four Malinsky sisters shared difficult relationships largely kept in check by their mother.

However, her sudden death removes the guardrails and leaves the sisters to grow up without a referee. Well into adulthood, they try to navigate their father’s failing health.

Author Sharon Adelman Reyes highlights the intricacies of a Jewish family, exploring how Rose, Naomi, Marla, and Betti experience unhappy, fragmented relationships with each other in Sister Acts.

Add an old family secret coming to light, and the drama heats up. Told in alternating perspectives, events from the past unfold to put the present into context.

No one escapes unscathed; it is simply a matter of which sister causes the most grievous offense since they all contribute to the estrangement.

Sister Acts delves into the relationship between four sisters, highlighting a pattern of past and present disharmony.

Sharon Adelman Reyes is a writer, editor, and equestrienne in Oregon, living on the slopes of an extinct volcano and looking out on an active one. During a lengthy professional career, she has published various works drawing on her experiences in multicultural teaching. Sister Acts is her first novel.

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