[Book Review] The Chicken Sisters | by KJ Dell’ Antonia

4/5 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Chicken Sisters is the story of a generations-long feud between two chicken shacks/restaurants—which happened to have been started by two sisters. Get it? Chicken. Sisters. A last-ditch option to bring some business into the small Kansas town where it all started (and is now dwindling), the two families enter into a reality-TV restaurant competition series, called Food Wars. With a strong sense of foreboding, both family’s (remember: related by blood and/or marriage) risk more than competing chicken recipes—all the personal, messy, private parts of their everyday lives are filmed and written for the theatrical consumption of the masses.

The story was good. It centers on two sisters. Neither perfect, which I can always get behind because who really cheers for flawless characters? Not me. Vying to win at all costs, even if the reasons behind their motivations are hidden or confused…. each of them is incredibly, complicatedly flawed. Ugly in moments, broken in others. Apologetic and reasonable in-between. They run the gamut, which makes them, even at their lowest points, also sympathetic. They have scars and the way they deal with them are as opposite as they are credible.

The drama is tight, tense. The family squabbles and betrayals are honest and uncomfortable. Well written. Satirically funny. Unfair but also just.

The only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars? By the end, the conclusion (the falling action) felt a bit…boring. Drug-out. I didn’t care very much how all the small strings would tie together. Maybe because I was emotionally exhausted and just wanted it to be over, maybe because by then, I hoped everyone walked away with the hurt they deserved, and the digs they deserved delivering to each other, and I didn’t care about a happily-ever-after. Maybe because there were just too many strings to tie up (which felt a bit like like a finale dump). That said, the ending was really good and I’m glad I held on to the last page.

A highly emotional, roller-coaster of a read.