Like many women who’ve only ever had a brother, or brothers or even no siblings at all, I’ve often wondered: What would it be like to have a sister? So many of my girlfriends have sisters, with those relationships falling everywhere on the spectrum, from completely dysfunctional to so amazing that all you can do when you see them together is sit back and experience a twinge of envy.

Another subject that’s always fascinated me is the differences between the families we’re born into and the families we choose for ourselves.

One of the great things about being an author is that, if you want to, you can explore any ideas that enter your head. There’s a piece of classic advice to writers: Write what you know. I’ve always hated that. If writers were to only explore what they already know, there would be a whole lot less books in certain genres – Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, you name it. Rather, I believe that the advice should be is: Write what you are most interested in learning about.

With over 20 published books to my name, I’d have to say that the vast majority of them have had main characters who were only children. Notable exceptions would be The Thin Pink Line and Crossing the Line, madcap comedies for adults involving a sociopath who fakes an entire pregnancy and who has a dysfunctional relationship with her sister; The Twin’s Daughter, a YA suspense novel set in Victorian England about a young girl who discovers that her gorgeous society mother has an identical twin who was raised in the poorhouse; and The Sisters 8, a nine-book series for readers ages 6-10 about octuplets whose parents go missing on New Year’s Eve, leaving the sisters to solve the mystery of what happened to Mom and Dad while keeping the outside world from realizing that eight little girls are living home alone.

More recently, I decided to explore the idea of the families we’re born into vs. the families we choose for ourselves in a new novel for adults called THE SISTERS CLUB. It features four very different women. Twentysomething Cindy suffers from low self-esteem, lives with her musician boyfriend, and has a sister in the psychiatric hospital. Lise is a university professor with dreams of being a published novelist who has a sister doing good works in Africa. Sylvia, the oldest of the four at fifty, is a caterer who recently lost her twin to breast cancer. And Diana, severely overweight and often wondering why her gorgeous husband chose her, has a toxic relationship with her sister Artemis back in England. One day on a whim, Diana puts a notice in a local bookstore’s newsletter, looking for like-minded women to join a book club, but what she’s really hoping for is to find women who will fulfill the sister function in each other’s lives.

I enjoyed writing THE SISTERS CLUB. I hope you enjoy reading it. If not, you know who to blame!

Lauren Baratz-Logsted is the author of over 20 books for adults, teens and children. Follow her on Twitter @LaurenBaratzL or visit her at www.laurenbaratzlogsted.com.

About the Book

Four women have little in common other than where they live and the joyous complications of having sisters. Cindy waits for her own life to begin as she sees her sister going in and out of hospitals. Lise has made the boldest move of her life, even as her sister spends every day putting herself at risk to improve the lives of others. Diana is an ocean apart from her sister, but worries that her marriage is the relationship separated by the most distance. Sylvia has lost her twin sister to breast cancer, a disease that runs in the family, and fears that she will die without having ever really lived.

When Diana places an ad in the local newsletter, Cindy, Lise, and Sylvia show up thinking they are joining a book club, but what they discover is something far deeper and more profound than any of them ever imagined

With wit, charm, and pathos, this mesmerizing tale of sisters, both born and built, enthralls on every page.

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