The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

The Second Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares is the second novel in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. The book picks up in the seventeenth summer of the girls from the original novel, exactly one year after the first novel began. The main characters are the same – Lena, Tibby, Bridget, and Carmen. The novel takes place at the girls' homes in Bethesda, Maryland, on the campus of Williamston College, and in South Carolina and Alabama.

As the novel opens, the girls are beginning their seventeenth summer together. While most of the girls have made a plan to stay at home in Maryland for the summer, Tibby has made it her mission to leave – she was the only girl to stay behind last year and had a challenging summer when she lost a new friend, Bailey, to cancer. Tibby enrolls in a film program on a college campus to get away, while the other girls make plans in Bethesda.

Lena recalls the year she spent sending letters back and forth to her long-distance Greek boyfriend, Kostos. She met Kostos last summer, while spending time in Santorini with her grandparents, and they fell in love. Halfway through the year, however, Lena stopped corresponding with Kostos because it was too painful to miss him all year. Lena is shocked and incredibly happy when Kostos shows up in America to visit her for the summer. They rekindle their romance, and then Kostos has to leave suddenly because of an emergency back home in Greece. Soon after that, Lena learns that her Bapi has had a stroke back in Santorini. She and her family return to Greece as well, only to find that Bapi has already passed away. Devastated, Lena's pain only worsens when she learns that Kostos has married a local girl. They had a brief fling while Kostos and Lena weren't together, and the girl became pregnant. Kostos married the girl out of honor, though he doesn't love her. Lena returns to the States, heartbroken and grieving. She is mournful until she meets Carmen's stepbrother, Paul, whom she takes a liking to almost immediately.



Meanwhile, Carmen is staying at home with her mom, Christina. Christina raises Carmen alone, after divorcing Carmen's father a few years before. Christina has recently become involved in a relationship with David, and it is getting more serious than Carmen wants to admit. Carmen begins to worry that her mother is leaving her behind for David. At first, Carmen tries to start her own romance with a classmate, but she is ultimately too distracted by her mom to follow through. She finally criticizes her mom for being in a relationship, causing David and Christina to break up. Christina falls into a depression, and Carmen, immediately regretting her selfish choices, tries to reunite the couple.

In New York City, Tibby is at Williamston College studying film at a summer program. Her friend Brian lives nearby and comes to stay and spend time with Tibby, but Tibby shuns him almost immediately after meeting fellow film student and hottie, Alex. Maura, a girl who follows Alex around, rubs Tibby the wrong way, but she continues to try to impress Alex by making an edgy film criticizing her mother. Tibby's mother is deeply upset about the film, and Tibby realizes that Alex is a fraud. She reconnects with Brian and begins to make a film about her lost friend, Bailey.

Finally, Bridget is in Bethesda with the other girls, struggling with a loss of her identity and her passion after a failed fling with her soccer camp instructor, Eric, last summer. Bridget changes her summer plans when she finds letters from her grandmother to herself and her brother and decides to track down her grandmother in Alabama to reconnect and find her roots. Bridget poses as a hired girl named Gilda, who helps her grandmother around the house. Bridget eventually learns more about her mother and her grandmother and reveals her identity. Her grandmother is thrilled that she has been connecting with her own granddaughter, and Bridget feels more like her true self.



Ann Brashares is a young adult novelist best known for the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. She has also written a few stand-alone novels, and two works of non-fiction. The “Pants” series includes four novels: Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Second Summer of the Sisterhood, Girls in Pants, and Forever in Blue. It also includes a spin-off novel, 3 Willows. Brashares's series was an international best-seller and has been translated into dozens of languages.