Published: December 2004 (print)/14th May 2010 (audio) 
Publisher: Delacorte Books/Bolinda audiobooks
Pages: 373 pages/1 disc
Narrator: Angela Goethals
Format: Audiobook
Genre: Young Adult
★ ★ ★ – 3 Stars
With a bit of last summer’s sand in the pockets, the Traveling Pants and the Sisterhood that wears them embark on their 16th summer.
Bridget: Impulsively sets off for Alabama, wanting to both confront her demons about her family and avoid them all at once.
Lena: Spends a blissful week with Kostos, making the unexplainable silence that follows his visit even more painful.
Carmen: Is concerned that her mother is making a fool of herself over a man. When she discovers that her mother borrowed the Pants to wear on a date, she’s certain of it.
Tibby: Not about to spend another summer working at Wallman’s, she takes a film course only to find it’s what happens off-camera that teaches her the most.
The second summer, the second adventure of the girls and their magic pants. The jeans are out doing their thing and the girls are having adventures. This time around they aren’t as separated, Bridgette does go to Alabama, but the other three stay close by for most of the summer. Now that the Pants have been established, this book was more a continuation of their own journeys, not so much about keeping them together and close. They do all have their own problems in their lives so the Pants do act as a connection, and each girl still uses its magic for guidance.
I liked this one a little bit better than the first one. Bridgette still annoyed me at times, but she seems to have subdued and maybe growing up emotionally. She finds peace of sorts away from her suffocatingly absent family and goes on an emotional discovery which I think she needed.
Carmen is an absolute brat in this book. I can see Brashares was going for the only child/single mum whole world combo and I get it, but my goodness she was intolerable. When her world is disrupted and she is put out in the smallest way she overreacts. I feel like Carmen was meant to have learnt from the events in book one, but she hasn’t seemed to learnt anything. She mistreats people and sabotages things and for someone meant to be almost 17 it was a bit ridiculous.
The other girls had minor improvements. Tibby tries to continue her film career and seems to gain some understanding of herself and her family. Lena too has some hard lessons to face. I feel Brashares cheated with some of Lena’s story, it fell into predictability. Actually, a lot of the book felt predictable. That’s why I was surprised that Bee’s storyline was actually probably the better of the three.
It was a good story, it wasn’t amazing, it was just four little adventures that kind of overlapped at times. The format is there, the jeans, the letters, the drama. As I say, some ridiculous moments and silly things, but I’ve come to expect that from these books.
You can purchase The Second Summer of the Sisterhood via the following
Lost in a Good Book 