"One Crazy Summer" - Rita Williams-Garcia

I was totally on board with this book - social change in California in the '60's, Civil Rights movement, mother-daughter relationships, coming-of-age - all that stuff... until page 212 (there are only 215 pages) when one sister betrayed another sister out of pride and bitterness. That was when I decided I didn't like the book.

Three sisters, Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern, travel to Oakland to visit their mother who abandoned them when Fern was a few weeks old. It's the 1960's and Oakland is rife with civil unrest. As the girls come to know their mother and her world, they begin to analyze their own lives in New York. They also come to think about what they will do for the love of a mother who doesn't want them.

Read Also:

The Penderwicks by Jane Birdsall, all about a family of sisters and their relationships.

Lynne Reid Bank's Maura's Angel is about two "sisters" during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Gennifer Choldenko's Chasing Secrets follows a girl and her two friends as they live through the summer of 1906 in San Francisco.