Betsy Lerner is a literary agent and the author of a popular advice book for writers, THE FOREST FOR THE TREES (which is superb), as well as two memoirs. Her debut novel, SHRED SISTERS, is about two Connecticut siblings who live by this motto: No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister. They sure do put themselves and each other through the emotional ringer.

Our narrator is Bunny. She is the shy sister who is never picked for the better team in gym, is called names and lives on the periphery of the world in which she grows up. Bunny sets up the story by ensuring that we understand how messed up her older sister, Olivia, is. Beautiful and reckless, Ollie does everything with a breathtaking intensity that she can’t stop. She is wonderful and beloved, but also beleaguered by her crazy brain.

"Amy and Ollie will feel like close relatives by the time you reach the end. SHRED SISTERS is a lovingly rendered work about family and how it shapes, batters and ultimately saves you."

All Bunny wants is to be like everyone else. Instead of wearing jeans and bringing a bagged lunch, she ends up following her mother’s instincts --- donning a dress and tights while carrying a “Lost in Space” lunchbox. Bunny tries hard to overcome her eccentricities and be like all the “sheep,” as her mother calls the trend followers. At least not sticking out in the crowd would be comforting. But with Ollie as a sister, too much attention would be paid to the family with the crazy daughter.

Ollie starts off as a typical rebellious kid. But when she runs away from home with boys and fails her senior year of high school, the situation gets a little testier. In the meantime, Bunny is finding her place among the smart kids who have their own pecking order and restrictions in their STEM community. The sisters are gearing up for very different adulthoods. But will they find a way for their lives to intersect despite these differences?

As Ollie’s life becomes more erratic thanks to the flame of her mental instability, Bunny --- now going by Amy, her true name --- encounters a real life that has elements of her dream existence. However, there is always a chance that Ollie will need help that will dismantle all of Amy’s hard-won autonomy. Like “The Odd Couple,” will these two women ever live together without killing each other first? Over the course of 20 years, the sisters engage and separate through major milestones of their lives, the pain of Ollie’s health issues always casting a pall over even the loveliest successes. But somewhere in that trajectory is the possibility that they will see each other in a very bright light and still manage to care about each other as they journey into middle age.

Betsy Lerner’s light prose, with her searing descriptive narrative power, will propel the reader through these stories with the kind of empathy and love that we usually save for people in our real life. Amy and Ollie will feel like close relatives by the time you reach the end. SHRED SISTERS is a lovingly rendered work about family and how it shapes, batters and ultimately saves you.