Hallmark’s Cozy New Show Is Based On The Chicken Sisters Book

When Reese Witherspoon recommends a book, there’s a good chance a buzzy film or TV adaptation is around the corner. Where the Crawdads Sing, Daisy Jones & The Six, and Little Fires Everywhere are just a few Reese’s Book Club picks that got the screen treatment.

The latest Reese’s Book Club alum to stream is Hallmark+’s The Chicken Sisters, which revolves around rival chicken restaurants in a small Kansas town. When she selected it for her taste-making club in 2020, Witherspoon called KJ Dell’Antonia’s book a “charming, hilarious, feel-good story about the kind of bonds & rivalries only sisters can share.”

The show will air weekly after its Sept. 10 premiere, but if you want to get a peek ahead at the delicious drama, here’s a summary of The Chicken Sisters’ book ending.

Meet The Feuding Families

As the fictional family lore goes, two sisters, Mimi and Frannie, ran a chicken restaurant together in Merinac, Kansas, in the late 19th century.

However, after a fight, Frannie got married and started her own restaurant. Centuries later, Chicken Mimi’s and Chicken Frannie’s remained long-running rivals. Mimi’s great-great-great-granddaughter, Amanda, married into Frannie’s side of the family (“It’s not gross,” she says of their shared but distant lineage) and was thus shunned from her mom’s restaurant.

Amanda is a widow still working with her mother-in-law when she nominates the rival restaurants to compete on a show called Food Wars. Her sister, Mae, is fired from her home makeover show in New York and travels home to Merinac to help Mimi’s face off against Frannie’s.

A Sisterly Twist

The ensuing sister-vs.-sister contest prompts the families to work through long-standing tensions, including the hoarding tendencies of matriarch Barbara, who’s recently been diagnosed with early Parkinson’s disease.

During a tasting session for the show, it’s discovered that Mimi’s and Frannie’s chicken actually tastes the same. While the Mimi’s team initially thinks that Amanda stole their recipe, the rival restaurants soon learn an even more surprising twist: A long-lost letter reveals that Mimi sent Frannie off to open her restaurant with her blessing, the recipe, and a loan. There was never any feud, but that fact got lost in history.

Empowered with the new discovery, the families put together a united front. Neither Mimi’s nor Frannie’s wins Food Wars, but both restaurants operate as one business — aptly named the Chicken Sisters.

With the extended family unit holding down the fort food-wise, Amanda pursues her lifelong dream and goes to art school.