In June we read “The Seven Sisters,” by Lucinda Riley. It is a love story that begins in the present day, goes back to the early 20th Century, and then returns to the 21st century. The heroine is a young woman called Maia who had a very odd upbringing on an island in Lake Geneva. When her billionaire adoptive father dies he leaves her clues about her identity which take her to Brazil. In Rio she meets and falls in love with a young author whose book she has translated and discovers she is connected to a Brazilian society beauty and an artist who worked on the statue of Christ the Redeemer at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Our group thought the most compelling part of the true story is the account of how the statue was erected in Rio de Janeiro in 1931. It is 30m tall and dominates the Rio skyline. It is an engineering masterpiece and was a focal point of the 2016 Olympics. We all found the story of how the statue was created, transported and erected,  fascinating. The book is the first of a series of seven. Each sister is named after one of the stars in the constellation Pleiades, the seven daughters of Atlas who were turned into stars according to Greek mythology.

The group agreed it was a great beach-read and some members are looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

Sheila Nicholson