
It's Friday . . . time to share book excerpts with:
- Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader,
where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as
well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book,
or anything else that the opening inspires.
- The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice,
where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find
one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.
Today I'm featuring The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley. The excerpts shared are from a trade paperback I purchased several years ago.

Beginning: I will always remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard that my father had died.
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Page 56: Never let your fear decided your destiny
I knew then that the seven words Pa Salt had left me could not have described me and who I was any more accurately.
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My thoughts: This book, the first in a series of eight novels, is a sweeping family saga that I have been wanting to start for a few years now. I even bought a copy several years ago, but it has languished on a shelf for far too long. Fortunately, it was my book club's January choice, so I finally dusted it off and immersed myself in the first installment of the enthralling story of the D'Apliese family. All members of my book group loved it too—and have since gone on to read other books in the series.
I'm also committed to reading the entire series—in fact, the release of the last book is imminent. It will take me longer to move along in the series than the other book club members, but I am happy to have a new series to savor.
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From GoodReads: Maia D’Apliese and her
five sisters gather together at their childhood home, “Atlantis”—a
fabulous, secluded castle situated on the shores of Lake Geneva—having
been told that their beloved father, who adopted them all as babies, has
died. Each of them is handed a tantalizing clue to her true heritage—a
clue which takes Maia across the world to a crumbling mansion in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil. Once there, she begins to put together the pieces of
her story and its beginnings.
Eighty years earlier in Rio’s Belle
Epoque of the 1920s, Izabela Bonifacio’s father has aspirations for his
daughter to marry into the aristocracy. Meanwhile, architect Heitor da
Silva Costa is devising plans for an enormous statue, to be called
Christ the Redeemer, and will soon travel to Paris to find the right
sculptor to complete his vision. Izabela—passionate and longing to see
the world—convinces her father to allow her to accompany him and his
family to Europe before she is married. There, at Paul Landowski’s
studio and in the heady, vibrant cafes of Montparnasse, she meets
ambitious young sculptor Laurent Brouilly, and knows at once that her
life will never be the same again.
In this sweeping, epic tale of
love and loss—the first in a unique, spellbinding series of seven
novels—Lucinda Riley showcases her storytelling talent like never
before.
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This
Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings post was originally
composed and/or compiled and published by Catherine for the blog,
bookclublibrarian.com. It cannot be republished without attribution.