She is the only one out of the six who has remained at Atlantis as an adult. The first book follows the story of the eldest sister, Maia. Pretty far fetched, right? But… Honestly, it’s totally worth your willing suspension of disbelief to get past this, because the stories are really good. Here they each receive a letter from their departed father, along with coordinates to give them a clue to their origins should they wish to discover them. They grow up and move away, living their own lives, until the news of their father’s death reunites them at Atlantis once more. Here they live in perfect peace and harmony, never wanting for anything and never (at least in the first 3 books) asking any questions about their origins or their mysterious adoptive father and what he does. He then brings them up at his Swiss fairytale estate – Atlantis, which is basically a mansion surrounded by nature with its own private lake access. In order to enjoy this series you have to first swallow a pretty unbelievable and utopic premise: A kind and mysterious old man with wealth beyond imagination decides to adopt 6 baby girls from different backgrounds over a period of several years. Someone who does the amount of research Lucinda Riley does for her books clearly must have a plan. What if she looses her mojo half way through and doesn’t finish (I’m looking at you, Patrick Rothfuss!)? What if she has a great idea for the beginning or a few good stories but no idea how it’s going to end? But not only has she been putting out one of these books a year consistently (which is an impressive tempo for something this well written and excessively researched), she had an overall plan for the entire series before she even published the first book.

Normally I’d be very wary of getting invested in such a long series. One out of many mysteries which I hope and expect will be revealed in the 7th book. Well, honestly that’s not yet clear, other than that there were supposed to be 7 sisters – to match the 7 sisters of the Pleiades, but in Pa Salt’s own words he never found the 7th sister. “6?” I hear you say, “then why is it called the 7 sisters?”. Each of the first 6 books centres around one of 6 sisters, all adopted by the mysterious Pa Salt. The Seven Sisters is a (planned) 7 book series, of which the first 4 books are currently published. The Seven Sisters fit the bill very well. This series was recommended to me by my BFF when J and I were heading for a weekend away last month and I wanted something to read that I could lose myself in.

The seven sisters book series