Although attention moves, with each chapter [of The Two Sisters], from one of the Cafferty sisters to another, the whole is remarkably smooth and the author achieves (perhaps in part by this device) both a feeling of the family as a unit and a sense that Maura and Caroline are distinct and separate people, each the center of her own world…. The changes that take place are realistic: Maura, with marriage and maturity, understands her parents better and Caroline, a pre-adolescent, begins to feel the independence and perception that mark the beginning of maturity. A sensible and sensitive story of an Edinburgh family.

Honor Arundel is well known for her understanding of the modern teenager's problems. [The Longest Weekend] is her most ambitious so far for it handles frankly the predicament of a girl of only seventeen who has an illegitimate baby by someone she loves. Her parents accept the situation and try to cope with it for her, so much so that the young mother has little responsibility for the child. (p. 325)

When the book begins the child is three years old and yet her father has never seen her and Eileen has little idea of how to manage her young daughter. The 'long weekend' of the title, alone with Gay, is the young mother's bid for independence and a normal relationship with her child. Incidentally the account of the struggle between the inexperienced mother and the wilful child is most amusing and very true to life. During the trying weekend, Joel comes to visit Eileen, there is a reconciliation and the book ends with the start of what promises to be a normal family life.

The whole subject of young love and the physical relationship that results between a girl who has led too sheltered a life and a gay and unconventional young man, is dealt with quite frankly. The author is not afraid to mention 'the pill' and the terrible decision Eileen must make between abortion, adoption or keeping the child she is to bear. The additional problem that Joel is a Jew seems to have little relevance to the story as a whole and does not affect the situation in the way one might expect.

It seems a pity if this book should be missed by the older age group for which it is intended…. The subject is dealt with honestly and while there is little suggestion of the moral implication of the young couple's action, it is very clear that they have brought unhappiness and heartache not only to themselves but to their parents. That the end is happy is to be expected as this is a story, but girls reading it could well realise the warning that such an affair does not often have so fortunate a solution. (pp. 325-26)

[The Longest Weekend] is a novel about a birth out of wedlock—not a new thing in itself, but new in the current climate of ideas….

The book [certainly has] shrewdness, as well as a briskness of humour….

Moreover, the two young people are sharply observed and convincingly seen throughout. But, away from the central idea, the scene is thin. The adults are pasteboard, and—the parents in particular—caricatures at that. Because of this, Eileen's mother's besotted desire to adopt the child herself rings almost unpleasantly. The child, by the way, like so many fictional children, totally lacks appeal…. Even the thesis itself is not wholly clear. To lie or not to lie? To go to the Clinic or not? Parents are left in even greater doubts about their role. Eileen, with no particular gifts that we can see, is Everygirl, more or less; but Joels, clever, attractive and basically responsible too, are not so frequently found.