I devoured Jessica Knoll’s debut novel, Luckiest Girl Alive. I liked the pacing of it and the theme of reconciling with your younger self. When I saw that Knoll had written another novel, The Favorite Sister, I knew I wanted to read it. While this one touched on some important topics, it did not live up to Knoll’s first novel.

The Favorite Sister follows a group of women on a reality TV show called Goal Diggers, which focuses on their lives as millennial female entrepreneurs. The story is told through three narrators: Brett, her sister Kelly, and Stephanie. Two other women, Lauren and Jen, are on the show, but are not narrators in the story.

The novel starts off on a dark note. Brett is dead and Kelly thinks she should take some of the blame. That particular plot point drew me in, because it made me expect this suspenseful story I couldn’t put down like Luckiest Girl Alive.

 But I didn’t find this book that suspenseful. There was enough happening to keep me reading to an extent, but I also didn’t have a problem putting it down. I think it took a long time to get to the events actually leading up to Brett’s death.

I usually like books with multiple narrators, but I don’t know if I liked the way these were executed. Brett’s chapters were okay. You get to learn about her struggle growing up plus-sized and that her mother was very hard on her for it. She owns a fitness studio company while also being a major advocate for body positivity, which is something that is emphasized at her studios.

Stephanie’s chapters were interesting, because she talked about growing up a black woman while being raised by her adoptive white mother. Being the oldest women on the show, she also talked about how society views aging women and how it feels like she’s being phased out of the show due to her age.

Kelly’s chapters just didn’t do it for me. She’s supposed to be in the present day retelling what happened to Brett in a TV interview. There weren’t enough of her chapters for me to really understand her. I think so much time is spent on Brett and Stephanie that Kelly’s point of view gets drowned out.

I really liked how this book made me think deeper about modern day feminism and the sentiment of women supporting other women. While that sentiment sounds good in theory, sometimes it just falls through in real life. Goal Diggers was supposed to be the feminist antithesis to Real Housewives and other reality TV shows that show a lot of drama and fighting between women.

But the producers of Goal Diggers ended up taking a page out of the classic reality TV formula and started stirring up drama and pitting the women against each other to boost the ratings. However the women could be really nasty to each other even without being provoked by the producers. For example, there were a lot of negative comments about Brett’s weight.  

This is all to say I didn’t think this book was a bad read. It was definitely thought-provoking at times, but it’s probably not going to be a favorite of mine and I don’t plan on returning to it. I think this book is better suited for those who love the drama of those modern reality shows like Real Housewives and are interested in what goes on behind the scenes.