I found it a little bit slow at first and found some moments really awkward but overall it was cute, like the other books. The friendship always gets me !! But I think I'll wait a bit before reading the last one because I just read 3 in a row and I'm starting to get a little bit bored reading it sometimes. So, because I don't want to be biased reading the last one, I'll wait before reading it.


(English edition : Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood)

So concludes the summer of the sisterhood...as does my summer soon. But I was left with so many questions...will Lena end up with Kostos?...will Tibby ever do anything?...will Carmen ever get over herself?...who cares about the last one?...and most importantly will I ever find a great book? Oh well.

Man this one put me through the ringer.
Can't believe it took me till book 4, to realise each prologue is written by a different girl. This book was left the the lively Bridget.
For this one I think the theme is love. Family, each other, parteners and themselves.
I had a bit of trouble with Tibbys view of Brian, she seemed to keep changing her mind set on whether he was pressuring her for sex or not. I'm not sure if it was Tibbys thinking, or confusing writing.
Personally this one hits home a lot more as they're catching up to my age.

THEY DIDN’T LIVE BIG, MAYBE!!!!!!!!! BUT THEY LIVED!!!!!

Damn, Bridget’s story across the entire series hit way harder as an adult than as a kid — except her clinical addiction to kissing adults, obvs

(straight up skipped Lena’s sections lmfao, like wow you’re painting and thinking about Kostos for the fourth book in a row? groundbreaking)

V grateful I had these books to help me learn how to be a person and a writer and a friend when I was younger. Even if they were WAY weirder about fat people than I remembered; I guess it was the 00s and everything was weird about fat people

with love, a ranking: Second Summer of the Sisterhood > The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants > Forever Blue > Girls in Pants

Rating: 3.5 Stars

I love a series, which let's me watch characters grow and change, but these characters seem to go one step forward and two steps back all the time. --sigh-- There were moments I loved, but they were usually overwritten by some bad choices that came later. I had more hope for these four in this book. It was still entertaining, even if I found myself frustrated with these women at some point.

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This was my least favorite of the series. While you could probably read this one on its own, it would make sense to read the others beforehand. For those not familiar with the series, it revolves around four friends and a special pair of pants that fit all of them. With these pants they experience life and all it has to offer.

In this book the girls have been in college and are doing their different summer activities; but they run into snags as usual. Carmen has found a friend who likes her only when she's not succeeding, and she's starting to succeed at acting camp. Tibby fears she is pregnant and it causes her to draw further and further away from her boyfriend. Lena is still pining for Kostos, but finds a new interest in Leo. And finally, Bridget plays with a dangerous relationship while she's on a dig abroad.

The characters really plummeted in this book. Lena as I finally figured out, is just boring. I could never figure out why I wasn't attracted to her character in the previous books and it just kind of hit me with this one. Tibby takes a wide leap and does some very uncharacteristic things. Carmen is even further from herself and despite being able to get down and out sometimes, it just wasn't realistic for her character to do what she does. Bridget is actually the only one I liked. I think this was the best of her in the books.

The writing is the same as in the others and it is easy reading. However, the plot was sorely lacking and kind of boring in this book. Actually a lot was recycled among the girls for this book.

This book just wasn't as charming as the others and I'm kind of glad it is the end because I don't think I'd go on. I almost wish that there had only been one book as the others were ok, but the first was among the strongest.

Forever in Blue
Copyright 2007
384 pages

Review by M. Reynard 2011

I enjoyed Forever in Blue very much. The friendship of these young girls are to die for. Love how they live their own live and yet somehow connecting with each other through a jean. I like the idea that 1 pant can fit to their body type and reflecting their everlasting friendship.

4 stars

Mon préféré de la série! Encore une fois, certains passages ont mal vieilli en 2021… j’ai aimé voir l’évolution des différents personnages!

This and other reviews can be found on The Psychotic Nerd

n  MY THOUGHTSn
I think out of all of the books in this series this one was my favorite (but not by much) because I did feel like they were growing up and there was a lot more going on in this book. I did get immersed in this book and read it fairly quickly. The small snippets of each girl made me want to continuously flip the pages of the book, but like the other books, I still did not feel like there was enough.

This book takes place the summer after the girls have completed their first year of college. They've been away from each other for an entire year, never really able to all meet up at the same time. I was excited to read this one because through the other books I have watched them grow and mature and I wanted to see how they handled college life. It's also closer to my age, even though my experience the summer after my first year of college was a lot different (I think I pulled weeds from my Grandma's garden and listened to Pretty Little Liars on audio, so, yeah, a lot different).

Anyway, let's go through the girls, shall we?

Lena is taking painting courses during the summer at her campus. The thing with Lena is that I like her, at times. I like her as a person because I am an artist myself (even though I don't draw people) and I like seeing how much she loves art. In the last book, she was one of my favorites, but in the last book, she was focused on her art, not Kostos. Kostos Kostos Kostos. Gosh, I know other readers love him, but I really can't stand him. Lena is a fantastic character when she is not obsessing over Kostos. In this book, she obsesses over him yet again, even though she develops a relationship with another artist.  One of the reasons why I don't like Kostos is that he just can't leave the girl in peace. She starts to get over him in book 2, then he comes back and starts something up again. Then he breaks her heart. It takes until this book to get over him and THEN HE COMES BACK AGAIN! And yes, he might have redeemable qualities, but from what I've seen of him, it feels like he needs Lena as a "back-up". He's caused Lena so much pain and she really does not need him to keep coming back to break her heart. I'm sorry. I do not ship this.

While at school Carmen has a hard time finding friends and becomes invisible, then Julia invites her to help with the theatre set which later gives her an opportunity at a theatre event. I feel like Carmen has gone through a lot of change since the start of the series. It's odd that most of that change is not seen in this book, but it is interesting to see how Carmen interacts away from her family. I've struggled with her character in the past because she was a bit of a brat in previous books, but she is certainly not a brat in this book. Her story had some quieter moments and unlike the others, no romantic moments (which is definitely not a bad thing since I was not really a fan of most of the romantic moments in this book), but I did like that this summer gave her strength to be someone without her friends or her family always by her side and recognize who will be there for her.

Bridget travels to Turkey for an archeological dig. With Bridget, I feel like her story continued to show her bravery and spontaneity Seeing her passion of just discovering objects in the dirt (or the dirt itself) was really amazing to see. It really fit her character. What I did not like about Bridget's story was her interactions with her professor. There is attraction there, but he is ten years older, has a wife and children, and Bridget is still dating Eric. It was very uncomfortable and I never like cheating in books, even if it turned into a lesson.

Tibby stays on campus and I guess takes classes (even though you never see her in class or do any work?). The main focus of her story is that she is with Brian, but after they get too close and Tibby has a scare, she distances herself from him. Again. Just like the last book. I didn't really care about Brian one way or another when starting this book because I honestly didn't know enough about him, but the way Tibby keeps distancing herself from being in a relationship with him doesn't really give me hope for their relationship. I did have problems with Brian in this book.  According to Tibby, Brian kept pestering her about sex but Tibby did not feel ready. One night they were drunk, kissing, and Brian asked her if she was ready and she said: "I don't know". Then they had sex. This bothers me because Tibby never said yes and later there is a pregnancy scare and I think she had some anxiety over the fact that her decision, her choice, was taken away from her. But she never talks about that with Brian, in fact when they supposedly get back together, I don't think they even talk about the pregnancy scare.  

n  IN CONCLUSIONn
Overall, while reading this book I very much wanted to keep reading and know what happened to the characters. I do think they have matured since the first book and this book does feature some more adult subjects. After reading, I did think back and realize that I had more issues with parts of the story than I thought and, just like the last books, not too much actually happens to each girl, but I like how these books have shown their friendship grow and change over time and I did find the way the book ended somewhat satisfactory.
There is another book, n  Sisterhood Everlastingn, which takes place ten years later, but...I think I'll skip it. After reading some reviews, it seems like some of the characters act uncharacteristically, they regress in maturity, and end up with some of the people I mentioned above that I found problematic. I think I'll just come up with my own future for the four girls.

My re-read of the series continues (this time on audio)... all so I can *finally* read the last book, Sisterhood Everlasting.

Original Read: May 2009
Re-Read: Oct 26-Nov 1, 2016

Lena: After four books of Lena being either in love with or heartbroken over Kostos, I would've thought that I would be sick to death of it. And in some ways I was (I mean, we get it already) but the fact is, I always liked Kostos and felt bad for the position he found himself in. While it was nice to see Lena finally make an effort to move forward I still felt for Kostos after the way she treated him during his surprise visit. And the way things were left at the end... meh. I like that the door was still open for the future but I'd hoped for more.

Bridget: I was so pleased with Bridget in the second and third books. It seemed like she had grown up a lot and was making smarter decisions. But here we are in the fourth book and she's right back to her reckless behavior. Her relationship with Peter while in Turkey was so ill-advised and I wanted to shake them both. It smacked of Bridget from 3 years ago and felt like a big step backwards for her.

Tibby: I've always said that Tibby was my favorite of the four girls but My re-read of the series has made me wonder how I ever could have thought that. Her shabby treatment of Brian over the course of four books/years was so bad that I could hardly stand her by this point. Her inclination through every book has been to push him away or treat him poorly - like some object she could pick up and put down at will, knowing she could always come back to it when she felt like it. And naturally Brian is supposed to be standing by just waiting for Tibby. In book two she shut him out after Katherine's accident. In book three she dropped him in favor of some new fake friends. She really pushed it this time and I found myself wishing Brian would finally tell her to take a hike. By this point I was completely over Tibby's mean girl ways when it came to Brian.

Carmen: Carmen has always been my least favorite character because she's usually so bratty but she ended up being the one I related to most in this one. Carmen's unbalanced relationship with a frenemy when she's at her most vulnerable actually had me pulling for her. Shocker.

Finally... FINALLY... I can read the last book in this series and see what became of the four friends a decade later.

Das ist wirklich eine Jugendbuchreihe, die alles hat, was eine Jugendbuchreihe braucht.

Ich fand es teilweise sogar tiefsinnig wie über Freundschaft und das Erwachsenwerden geschrieben wird und es hat mich sehr an mein eigenes Leben zu dieser Zeit erinnert. Am Ende habe ich auch ein bisschen geweint.

Il finale è molto dolce