Discover Well-Read Black Girl Books and the projects reshaping publishing →

Book Summary and Reviews of My Sister and Other Lovers by Esther Freud

My Sister and Other Lovers by Esther Freud

My Sister and Other Lovers

A Novel

by Esther Freud

  • Published:
  • Jul 2025, 240 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

A stirring novel from the author of I Couldn't Love You More and Hideous Kinky: the story of two sisters who couldn't be more different and the great love that holds them together throughout a tumultuous youth.

For as long as Lucy can remember, she's been caught between love for her rootless mother and devotion to her fierce and exacting sister, Bea. From their peripatetic childhood to their restless teenage years—hitching through rural Ireland, the move to a communal house—she's been forced to make a choice between these two very different ways of approaching life.

But as the girls come of age and embark on their own experiments—in love, drugs, work, motherhood—Bea is at risk of drifting further and further away. Can their loyalty to each other transcend the damages of a past that feels almost too dangerous to examine?

With scalpel-sharp insight, Esther Freud excavates the most intimate relationships of our lives, laying bare the fear and longing, the secrets and mistrust. My Sister and Other Lovers is an irresistible exploration of love, family, and freedom in all its forms.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"There's a monotonous quality to [the] narration...yet Freud's storytelling and her bohemian characters exert charm. Best of all, she delivers satisfaction in the book's full-circle conclusion which connects past and present in several forms...A deft, smart, indulgent work that delivers—finally—its necessary integration." —Kirkus Reviews

This information about My Sister and Other Lovers was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Click here and be the first to review this book!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Esther Freud Author Biography

Photo: Jillian Edelstein

Esther Freud trained as an actress before writing her first novel, Hideous Kinky, which was short-listed for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and made into a film starring Kate Winslet. After publishing her second novel, Peerless Flats, she was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists. Her other books include The Sea House, Lucky Break, Mr Mac and Me, and I Couldn't Love You More.

Link to Esther Freud's Website

Other books by Esther Freud at BookBrowse
  • Mr. Mac and Me jacket
  • Hideous Kinky jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked My Sister and Other Lovers, try these:

  • Shred Sisters jacket

    Shred Sisters

    by Betsy Lerner

    Published 2025

    About this book

    No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.

    From Betsy Lerner, celebrated author of The Bridge Ladies, comes a wry and riveting debut novel about family, mental illness, and a hard-won path between two sisters.

  • Hello Beautiful jacket

    Hello Beautiful

    by Ann Napolitano

    Published 2024

    About this book

    From the New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward comes a poignant and engrossing family story that asks: Can love make a broken person whole?

  • We Do What We Do in the Dark jacket

    We Do What We Do in the Dark

    by Michelle Hart

    Published 2023

    About this book

    A novel about a young woman's life-altering affair with a much older, married woman.

We have 10 read-alikes for My Sister and Other Lovers, but non-members are limited to three results. Join free to see the complete list of recommendations.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

More Literary Fiction

Browse all Literary Fiction books

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!
Win This Book
Win Theo of Golden

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi

One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…

Enter

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
A Pair of Aces
by Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray
Two women on opposite sides of the law team up to bring down gangster Lucky Luciano in this gripping novel.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket
    Feast
    by Catherine Kurtz
    In 19th-century France, a girl with a magical taste becomes a duc’s poison taster amid nobility and danger.
  • Book Jacket
    Summer's Never Over
    by Darby Bozeman
    A woman revisits a Southern summer camp where a counselor's death may not have been an accident.
  • Book Jacket
    Somebody Worth Killing
    by Jessica Payne
    Meet Nadia Davis, loving mom, devoted wife, secret assassin… and she needs a babysitter.
  • Book Jacket
    The Reimagining of Thornwood House
    by Jaleigh Johnson
    A witch and her ward discover a magical walking house and find the true meaning of home.
Book
Trivia
  • Book Trivia

    Can you name the title?

    Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

S the B

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.