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    3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows
    Unavailable
    3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows
    Unavailable
    3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows
    Audiobook7 hours

    3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows

    Written by Ann Brashares

    Narrated by Kimberly Farr

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In this follow-up novel to the #1 New York Times bestselling Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, it's time to discover a new sisterhood. A story of growing up, friendship, and understanding yourself, about three girls enjoying one last summer before high school.

    summer is a time to grow

    seeds
    Polly has an idea that she can't stop thinking about, one that involves changing a few things about herself. She's setting her sights on a more glamorous life, but it's going to take all of her focus. At least that way she won't have to watch her friends moving so far ahead.

    roots
    Jo is spending the summer at her family's beach house, working as a busgirl and bonding with the older, cooler girls she'll see at high school come September. She didn't count on a brief fling with a cute boy changing her entire summer. Or feeling embarrassed by her middle school friends. And she didn't count on her family at all. . .

    leaves
    Ama is not an outdoorsy girl. She wanted to be at an academic camp, doing research in an air-conditioned library, earning A's. Instead her summer scholarship lands her on a wilderness trip full of flirting teenagers, blisters, impossible hiking trails, and a sad lack of hair products.


    "Brashares gets her characters' emotions and interactions just right." --Publishers Weekly

    "Like the previous Pants books, this one will travel from girl to girl." --Kirkus Reviews 
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 13, 2009
    ISBN9780739380437
    Unavailable
    3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows
    Author

    Ann Brashares

    Ann Brashares is the author of the phenomenal five-million-copies-selling series of young adult novels, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, The Second Summer of the Sisterhood, Girls In Pants, and Forever in Blue, and the New York Times bestselling adult novel The Last Summer (of You and Me).

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    Reviews for 3 Willows

    3.5/5

    198 ratings30 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I really liked this one. It is sort've a spinoff of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. It follows a new trio of girls during their summer before their freshmen year of high school. It was like the other series, in that the girls are separated during the summer and discover new things about themselves, and although they feel like they are drifting away from each other, the distance makes them realize just how much they need each other.
    • 5/5
      -- If 3 WILLOWS by Ann Brashares is in the Young Adult genre this AARP-eligible reader loves it. Hardcover edition with white willow tree scrolled on teal jacket is beautiful to look at & hold. Ama, Jo, & Polly are separated the summer before they enter 9th grade. Each teenager faces a challenge. Plot occurs in the present with a bit of the past thrown in for context. I enjoyed popular SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS by Brashares (& 2005 movie adaptation). --
    • 3/5
      This book was okay. I was a little disappointed because the title says The Sisterhood Grows but I really didn't see how this was like the Traveling Pants Sisterhood. Yes, some of the other characters were mentioned and yes the sisterhood girls were mentioned, but these 3 girls were not friends from birth and in the book they were more mean to each other than sisters. I didn't find this as enjoyable as the other books and kind of wished I hadn't read it.
    • 4/5
      This didn't have the scope of Sisterhood nor did it have the same impact but I really liked reading this novel. All three characters had interesting stories and the writing is impeccable as ever. Wondering now if I should read Brashares' adult fiction.
    • 5/5
      This book is very similar to the story of the sisterhood of the traveling pants. It tells the story about friendship and the connection of a group of girls. It goes through a year of all the things that they face and how they face it together.Friendship6-8
    • 5/5
      3 Willows by Ann Brashares was one of the best books i’ve read this year. Its about three young girls, Jo, Ana, and Polly. They all deal with their own personal issues as they try to grow up.Polly who wants to become a model but is an outcast because she has a curvier body than others.Jo Who is becoming more popular and meeting a new guy Zack over the summer. And Ana who is a smart girl who gets a scholarship to a wilderness camp.These 3 girls once use to be best friends but as they got to highschool they drifted apart. As they grow up they start to realize they need each other. Will they become friends or stay their separate ways?I would recommend this book to anyone who is into friendship, love, and trust worthy.I rate this a five out of five.
    • 2/5
      I found this book to be very disappointing. I loved the traveling pants books, so much so that I bawled throughout the entire last book. However, this book was just blah. None of the characters grabbed me. It seemed like the author was trying to hard to create them and their situations. Overall, I was just disappointed.
    • 4/5
      Another successful book from a successful author. This book made me think that I'm so lucky to have friends that I can talk to whenever I needed them. People should read this and absorb all the lessons that this book will give us. You will surely love it and your time will not be wasted reading this.
    • 5/5
      Ann Brashers' is a fantastic wizard of writing, and never lets a reader down. Ann's series, the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, has characters that you never forget. STP and 3Willows are amazing books, made my only Brasher's herself. 3Willows is the next generation Sisterhood, always a treasure.
    • 3/5
      The new Sisterhood series! Ama, Jo, and Polly first met as 3rd graders, but they are going into high school and facing all kinds of problems and disappointments. Ama, the brainy bookworm concerned with her college applications already, applied for a summer academic program at a university and is instead assigned to a summer wilderness adventure camp where her hair straightener and expensive conditioners are confiscated. She's never been outdoorsy, so camping and dealing with bugs, animals and tents is NOT up her alley at all. Jo's parents are separating, so she moves to the beach house with her mother, gets a job, and falls for the best-looking waiter at the restaurant, whose girlfriend from last summer reappears at the restaurant and isn't too happy about Jo. Polly is desperate to be someone other than who she is, and tries to change herself with radical dieting and modeling camp, including a trip to New York for a modeling tryout. Tibby and Lena from the original Pants series drop in briefly also. 7th grade and up, good chick lit for the beach!
    • 3/5
      I loved the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants novels so much, so I decided to read this, thinking it would be just as good. I liked this book but it was not as good as I was hoping it would be. Love the title and meaning behind it though :)3 Willows is about 3 firends, Polly, Jo and Ama. Each set out to do different things for the summer. They each have their own personality and characteristics that set them apart. Ama in on a wilderness trip for the summer, but the only problem is she does not like outdoors. Will she overcome her fears and enjoy her trip? Jo goes to a family beach house working as a busgirl. Should be a fun summer, right? And Polly wants to change some things about her and live a glamours life. What is she willing to change?Overall, this was a good easy book to read. I think the reason why I only give it 3 stars is because after reading the Sisterhood book I had high hopes that this would be just like them. But it wasn't. I didnt love the characters as much as I did in the Sisterhood. But non-the less it was good.
    • 4/5
      Another great story about three friends, the things that cause them to drift apart and the events that bring them back together, Everyone goes through a search for themselves. These three girls, Jo, Ama and Polly, do so in the tender summer before high school. The fact that they live in the same town as the famous Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants brings added drama to their lives. They wish for a similar magic. After trying too hard to grasp that magic, they grow apart, making new friends and new adventures. But true friends find their way back to one another. They are the family that one chooses.
    • 4/5
      I was expecting this to have more to do with the original Sisterhood, but only one of them even makes a cameo. Carmen doesn't get mentioned at all. The theme is similar: middle school girls learn about friendship and meet cute boys. Ama goes to Wilderness Camp despite being very academic and not outdoorsy at all. Jo gets a summer job at a restaurant on the beach and tries to hang out with the cool kids. Polly decides she wants to be a model and tries to diet. They all learn a Valuable Lesson. Recommended for actual middle schoolers.
    • 4/5
      I read this book last year, and while I vaguely remember liking it, and that it was about a small group of young female friends relying on each other for support as they deal with the harsh world of growing up, the fact that I remember nothing of the plot or characters is meaningful. This is the first of Brashares' books I could say that about. Still, I did like it. That much I remember.
    • 4/5
      I had to keep in mind that this was written for a younger age group. I kept finding myself criticizing certain parts, but I think if I'd read it back as an early teenager, I would've rated it higher. For a younger audience, it's a good read. Obviously, the writing style is similar to that of the Traveling Pants series, although not as good, I didn't think. (But then again, that may have been due to the target audience.) All three of the characters in this annoyed me to some degree -- they weren't entirely likeable, but I also think lots of 14-year-olds probably fit that category. What I liked best about this book was the Willow theme in general, in addition to the way there were subtle references to the characters in the Traveling Pants series. I thought Brashares did quite a nice job in both those aspects.I also enjoyed the author interview at the end of the last disc. It sounds like "The Willows" will probably continue on into a series. Not yet sure if I'll pursue book #2 if/when it's released. We'll wait & see...!
    • 4/5
      I bought 3 Willows a year and some months ago when it was first released. I am a huge fan of the Sisterhood of Traveling Pants novels (the series is one of my favorites) and was excited when I picked it up. Yet, I've been putting off reading it because since it was dealing with girls younger than the main characters of the Sisterhood series, I thought that it'd be a bit too juvenile for me. Well, I was completely wrong and am a little bit ashamed of thinking that way (considering I'm a huge YA fan and know that a lot of people look their noses down at it and don't consider it "real" literature) because I found it extremely good. What I loved about the novel was that it was slightly more "real" than the Sisterhood of Traveling Pants series (and before people get annoyed at me for bringing up Brashares previous series, let me just write that it's absolutely impossible to write about 3 Willows and not mention the Sisterhood series as they are sort of in conjuction with each other). In 3 Willows, the girls are trying to find a way to remain friends even though they are all headed in different directions. They actually have to work a bit more harder at this since they don't have the advantage of having magical pants at their disposal. This makes it much more relateable as I don't think any group of friends has a pair of magical jeans to help them remain true to each other (although then again, who knows?). I especially loved the characters. This was something that I was worried about before, not connecting much with the characters because it's been a while since I was a middle school graduate. But I found that gradually I got invested in the characters. While I didn't love them as much as I did Tibby, Lena, Bridget, and Carmen, I still felt for the problems that they had to endure and cheered when they ended up victorious (or at least somewhat victorious). There were a couple of things that nagged me about 3 Willows, though. While I loved the characters as individuals, I found that it was hard for me to completely buy their friendship at first. I could see how they would become friends, but I could also see how easy it was for them to drift apart because they didn't seem like the "bestest" friends to begin with. They seemed like friends, but they didn't seem to have that connection with each other they way the Sisterhood did. Because of that I found that I wasn't really connected to the friendship aspect of the novel until the end. Another thing that bothered me was that the Sisterhood (the original ones) were well-known in the novel and were regarded as a mystical group. Everyone looked at them as though they were untouchable and everyone knew about the magical pants. For some reason, I always thought that the Sisterhood would keep the power of the pants a secret. If not from their family, then at least from outsiders. Anyway, the constant mentioning of them kept taking me out of the story of Ama, Jo, and Polly and more into the world of Tibby, Lena, Bridget, and Carmen. It would've been fine if they were just mentioned once or twice, but not as much as they were. Also, Effie (Lena's sister) was in this novel and she was a complete and total bitch. I was one of those people who was endeared by Effie in the Sisterhood novels and liked her brief parts in the books. So having her come back, as the Devil Incarnate severely pissed me off. It would have been better if a random unknown character took her part in the book. Anyway, despite my small problems with 3 Willows, I loved it. I thought it was a sweet, cute, story. It wasn't as enchanting as The Sisterhood of Traveling Pants series, but that can be because I got to know the original Sisterhood throughout four amazing novels and have only known Sisterhood 2.0 for one novel. Still, while I liked the original Sisterhood better, 3 Willows was still good in it's own right. I, for one, am hoping that there is a sequel in the works (but I haven't heard anything about this so maybe there won't be) so that I can revisit with Ama, Jo, and Polly and see what's going on with their lives in the summer after their first year of high school. 3 Willows is a novel that I recommend to any YA lover and I don't regret reading it, just regret putting it off for as long as I have.
    • 3/5
      Would recommend it to teens. Wonderful story about 3 friends who were once close but are not so much anymore. It's the summer before entering HS and they learn a lot about themselves and each other.
    • 3/5
      A nice enough story for preteens, but I'm afraid it will never live up to the Traveling Pants legacy, at least in my books.The characters were strong, however unlike the Traveling Pants books, for the majority of the book the girls weren't good friends - it sort of felt like something was missing.
    • 4/5
      Susan says: This book is about three friends - Polly, Ama, and Jo - who have grown apart at the end of their 8th grade year. Each girl longs for their friendship, but doesn't like things about the people in the friendship. They all do different things during the summer - Ama goes to wilderness camp against everything she likes, Jo goes to the beach with her mom, and Jo stays home and goes to modeling camp. Each girl finds her way back to the others through a difficult summer including first boyfriends, alcoholism, extreme dieting, and getting lost in the wilderness. Nothing happens that would make this a teen book, so I am going to move our copies to Youth. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants girls are in this book as well, although it is really brief glimpses except for Lena's sister Effie. They all live in the same town, so it doesn't seem unconnected or forced. A sweet book about friendship and growing up.Ages 12-14
    • 3/5
      Somehow I missed the blurb that this was by the same author who wrote The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Yes, I am probably one of the few remaining people who have not read that series so I cannot compare this book to those. I have to admit that while 3 Willows isn't bad it definitely is not one of my favorite books. I didn't really get what set Polly's mother's down her path and I felt like Polly's eating issues were sort of glossed over in the end. Jo's problems with Zach were pretty predictable. The one story that I sort of got into was Ama. She was so whiny that her story was funny. This book was an interesting read but not one that I would put high on my list.
    • 4/5
      It's impossible to evaluate this book without reference to Brashere's Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. Not only is the "Sisterhood" referenced in the title, but the Sisterhood itself figures in the story. In some ways, that's a good thing, serving to establish a setting with which readers are already familiar. In other ways, it's a bad thing, setting up expectations that aren't really fulfilled.The first book of the Sisterhood is the story of a group of girls who have been friends since babyhood, and must learn how to continue their friendship as they spend their first summer apart. In 3 Willows, by contrast, the friendship among the three girls has started to unravel. Knowing what we know about the Sisterhood, the theme and resolution of this book, that old friendships are important even as we grow up, is somewhat predictable. Still, it's a good book, with each of the three girls well-drawn, sympathetic, and realistically written.
    • 3/5
      Another lovely tearjerker from Ann Brashares. I didn't love this one as much as her Sisterhood books, mainly because the characters in this one were a bit younger. But still fun and fluffy. A quick, easy read. Keep the Kleenex handy.
    • 4/5
      This was an enjoyable book about three young girls discovering who they are. Each has a seperate adventure but in the end, they all return to their friendship as a way of validating the changes they have gone through. They all have different challenges - I liked that Ms. Brashares lets them come to healthy realizations about themselves before they become too embroiled in what could become tragic situations. Good model for young teens.
    • 4/5
      Good, i think Ann Brashares is a little too attached to her 'Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants' girls, she mentions them a lot and it was really annoying at first, but it got better. Favourite character was either Jo or Ama. Found Polly irritating at some points. Pretty great book overall.
    • 3/5
      Brashares' writing is poignant and touching. This book is aimed at young adults, particularly early teens, and I think it will strike a note with its target audience. This author knows how to tell a wonderful and empowering story.
    • 4/5
      I was very excited to see "3 Willows" and knew that is was important not to go into it expecting it to be like the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. While I didn't have those expectations, I was pleased to see the references to the traveling pants. (I'm sure there are a lot of readers, including myself that will never forget the traveling pants experience and were so thankful for even the smallest of references.) The characters in this book are younger than what I'm used to reading about, so at times their issues seemed rather trivial, yet, I was still invested in what they went through. The willow tree analogy is nice and especially useful for young readers. I also think this book effectively addresses the way that young friendships change so quickly without any large catalysts.Overall, a good read. It is so hard not to compare it to the Traveling Pants.
    • 4/5
      Set in the same town and school as Sisterhood of the Traveling pants and some of those characters appear in this story. This time three girls start out as estranged friends and end up relizing what they have given up. Definitely along the lines of Sisterhood, but I didn't feel it was as deep or developed.
    • 4/5
      I love her books especially her teen ones. In 3 Willows she writes about the struggling friendship of Jo, Polly and Ama. Like her Sisterhood books it takes place over summertime and you follow each character on their own adventure. Some characters are familiar from the sisterhood books which grabbed my attention but I didn't like what she did with the one known character. I didn't like how Jo's story ended. Didn't seem finished. But hopefully the series will continue.
    • 4/5
      Jo, Ama, and Polly were best friends all through middle school, but now it's the last summer before high school and they've grown apart. Jo's chasing after the popular crowd. Ama's concentrating on her studies. And Polly's wondering what happened to their friendship. 3 Willows follows each of the girls as Ama goes on a dreaded wilderness retreat, Jo navigates the social hierarchy at her beachside restaurant job, and Polly pursues an ill-advised quest to become a model. It's no Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, although some of the Sisters make appearances in the book, but by the end of the book I appreciated it for its sweet story. It took me awhile to get into it because the characters don't have a strong bond at the beginning and I was left wondering why I was supposed to care about them. But by the end of the book I was interested in all of their stories and I'll be looking forward to hearing more from these characters.
    • 4/5
      This book took me back to the beginning of high school and how awkward things get with friends. It centers on the lives of 3 girls who were best friends but who have grown apart. While most of the novel is about their separate stories in the end they reconnect. I really enjoyed reading this book and I would even go as far as to say I like it better than the Travelling Pants books.