Book review via Amazon.com. I'm Adrienne Haus, survivor of a
mother-daughter book club. Most of us didn't want to join. My mother signed me
up because I was stuck at home all summer, with my knee in a brace. CeeCee's
parents forced her to join after cancelling her Paris trip because she bashed
up their car. The members of "The Unbearable Book Club," CeeCee,
Jill, Wallis, and I, were all going into eleventh grade A.P. English. But we
weren't friends. We were literary prisoners, sweating, reading classics, and
hanging out at the pool. If you want to find out how membership in a book club
can end up with a person being dead, you can probably look us up under mother-daughter
literary catastrophe. Or open this book and read my essay, which I'll turn in
when I go back to school.
Oh man guys, it was my first full week at the new job and I am soooo
wiped! I love it so much. It is kind of my dream to work with children and
young adults. I have so many storytime and program ideas going through my head
that I have several lists already on my computer. Library week in April is
pretty much planned for my storytime and my Baby Fun Times for the whole month
of March are planned and done. Sorry about this tangent!
Onward to Delaware for the YA
reading challenge. This book has an
interesting concept, from someone who is in a book club (reminder to self to actually
read the book for this month in between books). That said…uh…I don’t know what
to think about this book. It seems to fall flat and the characters do not seem
to really change or grow. Adrienne Haus, main protagonist, does not seem to
change at all. She is just as crazy as a teenager, terrible with communication
and lonely still as in the beginning. We don’t know if the girls at the end are
even actual friends. It did not feel like so in the conclusion. Perhaps the
girls have a better understanding of one another, but it definitely did not
have The Breakfast Club ending I was
hoping for.
Now is that bad? Not necessarily because not everything changes, I mean
it worked for Seinfeld and Huckleberry Finn. It is probably my
preference that characters grow or change. That’s how I get interested in
stories. People don’t always change of course, even with the events that occurred.
I just felt that the characters were not
real. The characters seemed to be
extremes in the stereotypical high school personas. CeeCee the popular girl was
completely crazy and unruly, Jill as the overachiever, Wallis as the weird
outsider, and Adrienne as the middle, blander persona. ALL were extreme. I
wouldn’t say it was unrelatable, just didn’t feel…real. I mean yes in my high school these personas
existed, but not the degree that these girls.
This novel could be a good addition to a library’s young adult
selection. It would be a good teen summer read or joke YA Book Club choice, but
if you have budget woes, I wouldn’t. There are other summer books that did a
better job at captivating the audience.
That’s eight down, 42 more to go!
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