Clara’s Verdict
By the time you reach the sixth book in Lucinda Riley’s Seven Sisters series, you either trust her completely or you have already moved on. Those still here will not be disappointed. The Sun Sister is, in my view, one of the strongest entries in the sequence – partly because Electra D’Aplièse is a more complicated protagonist than some of her sisters, and partly because Riley takes genuine risks with the dual timeline, refusing to let the African historical strand merely decorate the contemporary plot.
Pippa Bennett-Warner’s narration is superb: warm, precise, and emotionally intelligent. At nearly twenty-three and a half hours, this is a serious commitment, but Riley earns every minute. A 4.7 rating from fifty listeners on Audible UK tells its own story.
About the Audiobook
The Sun Sister follows Electra, one of the six daughters adopted by the mysterious billionaire Pa Salt – whose recent death has set the entire series in motion. In her mid-twenties, Electra appears to have everything: a supermodel career, fame, beauty, money. What she actually has is a precarious grip on her own mental health, masked by alcohol and drugs. When a letter arrives from a woman claiming to be her grandmother, she is forced to confront questions about her origins she has long avoided.
Interwoven with Electra’s contemporary story is the 1939 narrative of Cecily Huntley-Morgan, a young American woman who arrives in Kenya to recover from heartbreak, becomes entangled with the Happy Valley set, and makes a promise that will shape generations. Riley’s ability to render colonial-era Kenya – its landscapes, its social hierarchies, its moral contradictions – with genuine textural richness is one of the novel’s great achievements. The sixth book in The Seven Sisters series, published by Macmillan.
The Narration
Pippa Bennett-Warner is a revelation in this recording. She brings an expressive, grounded quality to Electra’s chapters that makes the character’s fragility entirely credible without ever making her pitiable. The switches between the contemporary New York and the 1939 Kenyan settings are handled with real finesse – the tonal shift between the two worlds is immediate and convincing. Bennett-Warner has a gift for making very long audiobooks feel intimate rather than exhausting, and at twenty-three hours and sixteen minutes, that gift is not a small thing. The audio production quality from Macmillan is first-rate.
What Readers Say
Listener responses have been strongly positive. One UK reader who has worked through the whole series writes that Riley’s “skillful story-telling” makes it impossible to slow down: “I couldn’t get each book finished fast enough to move on to the next one.” Another describes the novel as “captivating and honest,” adding that she “truly got lost in the places and the story.” The sole mild reservation among recent reviewers is that Electra’s arc is somewhat more turbulent than those of her sisters; one listener rates it four stars rather than five on that basis alone. At 4.7 from fifty reviewers, the overall verdict is clear.
Who Should Listen?
Ideal for anyone already immersed in the Seven Sisters universe, though the Kenya storyline and the themes of identity, addiction, and maternal legacy mean it will also work for readers new to Riley who enjoy emotionally rich, dual-timeline historical fiction. If you love sweeping family sagas that move between continents and decades – and you want a narrator who genuinely inhabits the world she is reading – this is an excellent choice. Find The Sun Sister on Audible UK.
