“Like a knife flashing in the sunlight”: Talia Hibbert’s The Brown Sisters Trilogy

I picked these books up quite simply due to the overwhelming love for them that thrums across the interwebs like cosmic background radiation. Constant. Immutable. Just perennially reliably there.

And perennially reliably wonderful they are. They cut you to the quick. Sunshine dancing across the blade. Precision storytelling and genre mastery at its finest.

My reading notes after finishing each one…

Get a Life, Chloe Brown

She saw him as poetry. He had this visceral quality, even when he was glaring at her, but especially when he painted. There was an honesty, a vulnerability about him that captivated her. Chloe knew she was flesh and blood and bone, just like him. But she wasn’t alive like he was. Not even close. He was in profile, focused on the canvas in front of him. Sometimes he painted haltingly, almost cautiously; other times, he would stare at the canvas more than he touched it. But tonight, he was a living storm, dabbing and daubing with quick, fluid movements.

Well, this was lovely. Can see why people were swept away by these characters and will definitely be reading the rest of the trilogy to sink into the stories of the other two sisters. Very envious of the matching Illumicrate set with the rainbow spredges.

“I am not hurt,” she said, “I am in pain.” Her voice was bright in a dangerous sort of way, like a knife flashing in the sunlight.

An evergreen 2021 mood.

Also shout-out to the Voyager reference on page 52. Name-dropping Captain Janeway certainly softens the ache of the absence of dragons when one sidles away from one’s epic storm-wracked stomping ground onto the foreign yet buoyantly effervescent pastures of romantic comedy. Really all I ever need to be lured into the contemporary realm.

Take a Hint, Dani Brown

The thing about mental health was, you couldn’t take a course of antibiotics and be magically healed. Some people’s brains just thought too much or felt too much or hurt too much, and you had to stay on top of that.

Just as charming as the first one.

Although if my SO’s grand gesture was revealing she’d been sneaking off to conventions for eight months to meet all my favourite authors without me I’d yeet her into the Clyde.

Act Your Age, Eve Brown

“I told you before, that there are different ways to fail. Imperfection is inevitable. That’s life. But it doesn’t sound to me like you failed at all, Eve. It sounds like your dream broke, and you’ve been picking up shattered pieces, and blaming yourself when your hands bleed.”

Sweet sweetness as per the previous two.

Shout-out to the Hayley Kiyoko shout-out.