Get your first book for just $5.

Join today!

We’ll make this quick.

First, enter your email. Then choose your move.

By pressing "Pick a book now" or "Pick a book later", you agree to Book of the Month’s Terms of use and Privacy policy.

Get your first book for just $5.

Join today!
undefined

You did it!

Your account is now up to date.

get the appget the app

Our app is where it’s at.

Unlock our Reading Challenge, earn prizes, and get notified of new books on our app.

Our app is where it’s at.

Unlock our Reading Challenge, earn prizes, and get notified of new books on our app.

get the ios appget the android app

Already have the app? Explore here.

get the ios appget the android app
The Chicken Sisters by KJ Dell'Antonia

Contemporary fiction

The Chicken Sisters

by KJ Dell'Antonia

Excellent choice

Just enter your email to add this book to your box.

By pressing "Add to box", you agree to Book of the Month’s Terms of use and Privacy policy.

Quick take

Estranged sisters find themselves on opposite sides of Food Wars in this entertaining story of family and fried food.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Romance

    Romance

  • Illustrated icon, Family_Drama

    Family drama

  • Illustrated icon, LOL

    LOL

  • Illustrated icon, Snarky

    Snarky

Synopsis

In tiny Merinac, Kansas, Chicken Mimi's and Chicken Frannie's have spent a century vying to serve up the best fried chicken in the state—and the legendary feud between their respective owners, the Moores and the Pogociellos, has lasted just as long. No one feels the impact more than thirty-five-year-old widow Amanda Moore, who grew up working for her mom at Mimi's before scandalously marrying Frank Pogociello and changing sides to work at Frannie's. Tired of being caught in the middle, Amanda sends an SOS to Food Wars, the reality TV restaurant competition that promises $100,000 to the winner. But in doing so, she launches both families out of the frying pan and directly into the fire...

The last thing Brooklyn-based organizational guru Mae Moore, Amanda's sister, wants is to go home to Kansas. But when her career implodes, Food Wars becomes her chance to step back into the limelight. Mae is certain she can make the fading Mimi's look good—even if that pits her against Amanda and Frannie's. With a greedy producer stoking the flames, their friendly rivalry quickly turns into a game of chicken. Yet when family secrets become public knowledge, the sisters must choose: Will they fight with each other, or for their heritage?

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of The Chicken Sisters.

The Chicken Sisters

The hit TFC series Food Wars is back! And this time, it’s personal. We’re looking for rival restaurants with a deeper connection—married chefs, best friends with dueling taco trucks. If you’re a restaurant owner or worker who shares a bond with the crew at a competing restaurant in your town, we want to hear from you.

It’s a fantastic opportunity to showcase your food on TV, expose your brand to a national audience, and finally resolve, once and for all, who’s the best at serving up your local specialty. Food Wars judges will vote on who provides the best dining experience, the best menu, and, of course, the most delicious, most authentic version of whatever it is you do, and it will all be shared live via social media and then on produced episodes of our show. The winner will be awarded $100,000 to invest in their business. Past victors have franchised and been offered lucrative product-branding opportunities.

To be considered for the show, both restaurants must be willing and enthusiastic about participating and must be available for up to five possibly nonconsecutive days of filming. Applicants should e-mail no more than 300 words describing the rivalry and relationship between your competing restaurants, along with some images that capture the scene. We need to locate our next competitors RIGHT AWAY, so drop us a line ASAP! Sabrinasky@thefoodchannel.com

Create a free account!

Sign up to see book details, our quick takes, and more.

By pressing "Sign up", you agree to Book of the Month’s Terms of use and Privacy policy.

Why I love it

2020 has changed us all. In time we’ll look back and analyze just how much, but there’s one thing I already know and that is that this year—with its isolation and confusion—has made me crave laughter. It has made me ravenous for comedy that rests squarely on real emotion and insight into all that is absurd in our world. The Chicken Sisters, filled with hijinks, community, and just the right amount of inward contemplation, was the perfect bite of humor and drama to satisfy my craving.

The book masterfully turns a spotlight on what’s most ridiculous about our social media-fueled definitions of ourselves. What better way to examine our ability to connect with others and with our own selves than a story about sisters? Mae and Amanda have grown up in the middle of a century-long family feud over two fried chicken restaurants. Their childhoods were the collateral damage of that war and they’ve both found ways to bury it and survive. Or so they believe, until one of them decides to throw it all open in front of reality TV cameras on a cooking competition show called Food Wars.

Dell’Antonia manages to make Mae and Amanda every one of us, tied up in the intense conditioning of our upbringing, held together by it, but also fighting to break away and see who we are outside the comfort and pain it provides. Along the way she urges us to lighten up and to separate the noise from the voice of our hearts—a true gift to help process this unprecedented year.

Member ratings (3,566)

Family drama
The Last One at the Wedding
The Night We Lost Him
Madwoman
Hum
Family Happiness
Husbands & Lovers
Same As It Ever Was
Jackpot Summer
The Lion Women of Tehran
Did I Ever Tell You?
Real Americans
The Reappearance of Rachel Price
Just for the Summer
All We Were Promised
Hard by a Great Forest
Family Family
Northwoods
Mercury
The Second Chance Year
A Winter in New York
Check & Mate
What We Kept to Ourselves
The Leftover Woman
While You Were Out
Evil Eye
Just Another Missing Person
Family Lore
Little Monsters
The Connellys of County Down
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
Paper Names
Divine Rivals
Hang the Moon
The Last Russian Doll
Maame
White Horse
The Family Game
The Fortunes of Jaded Women
When We Were Bright and Beautiful
You're Invited
Marrying the Ketchups
Part of Your World
The Good Left Undone
The Verifiers
The Unsinkable Greta James
Don't Cry for Me
Black Cake
Olga Dies Dreaming
The Family
The Book of Magic
Sankofa
Everything We Didn't Say
Apples Never Fall
The Sweetest Remedy
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina
We Are the Brennans
Skye Falling
Last Summer at the Golden Hotel
Things We Lost to the Water
Libertie
What's Mine and Yours
The Bad Muslim Discount
The Push
The Chicken Sisters
In a Holidaze
White Ivy
The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany
Practical Magic
Head Over Heels
The Vanishing Half
All Adults Here
The Kingdom of Back
I Have No Secrets
Saving Zoë
Color Me In
Past Perfect Life
Things You Save in a Fire
There's Something About Sweetie
All That You Leave Behind
The Other Woman
Small Fry
The Winter Sister
The Rules of Magic
& Sons
Family drama
View all
The Last One at the Wedding
The Night We Lost Him
Madwoman
Hum
Family Happiness
Husbands & Lovers
Same As It Ever Was
Jackpot Summer
The Lion Women of Tehran
Did I Ever Tell You?
Real Americans
The Reappearance of Rachel Price
Just for the Summer
All We Were Promised
Hard by a Great Forest
Family Family
Northwoods
Mercury
The Second Chance Year
A Winter in New York
Check & Mate
What We Kept to Ourselves
The Leftover Woman
While You Were Out
Evil Eye
Just Another Missing Person
Family Lore
Little Monsters
The Connellys of County Down
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
Paper Names
Divine Rivals
Hang the Moon
The Last Russian Doll
Maame
White Horse
The Family Game
The Fortunes of Jaded Women
When We Were Bright and Beautiful
You're Invited
Marrying the Ketchups
Part of Your World
The Good Left Undone
The Verifiers
The Unsinkable Greta James
Don't Cry for Me
Black Cake
Olga Dies Dreaming
The Family
The Book of Magic
Sankofa
Everything We Didn't Say
Apples Never Fall
The Sweetest Remedy
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina
We Are the Brennans
Skye Falling
Last Summer at the Golden Hotel
Things We Lost to the Water
Libertie
What's Mine and Yours
The Bad Muslim Discount
The Push
The Chicken Sisters
In a Holidaze
White Ivy
The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany
Practical Magic
Head Over Heels
The Vanishing Half
All Adults Here
The Kingdom of Back
I Have No Secrets
Saving Zoë
Color Me In
Past Perfect Life
Things You Save in a Fire
There's Something About Sweetie
All That You Leave Behind
The Other Woman
Small Fry
The Winter Sister
The Rules of Magic
& Sons