I have to say, as much as I do love this series, I am ready to smack Carmen, and I’m a bit tired of Brashares feeling the need to inject drama into everything. This series is escapist reading. I shouldn’t have felt depressed and worried only 60 pages in. But I’m sure many of you know that teenagers are often set on finishing a series like this just for the sake of finishing. So take my fuddy-duddy complaining with a grain of salt. It’s been awhile since I was 18.
I think that one of the reasons I didn’t like this as much as I hoped was because I didn’t see much growth from the characters. They acted like themselves, I get it, but people do change between their sophomore year in high school and their freshman year in college. At least I hope they do. So it was less than thrilling to me to see the girls continue to struggle with the same type of issues.
Sex, Nudity, Dating – Pretty much everyone is having sex in this book. I think it’s limited to one time per set of characters. As you would expect, there’s also kissing, pressing up against each other, wanting sex, fantasizing about sex and discussion of virginity. This book does feature characters using protection (whoo-hoo!), but not all of the characters (booo!) One character has a pregnancy scare and there is discussion of periods related to that subplot. There’s also a character who cheats on her boyfriend by kissing a thirty year old man who is married with two children. He wants to make passionate love to her, but they resist.
Profanity – “God,” “shit,” “bitch,” “hell” and someone thinks about giving someone the finger.
Death, Violence and Gore – During an archeology job, a character works with ancient skeletons.
Drugs, Alcohol and Smoking – A character drinks a beer and says she’s formed an acquaintanceship with beer over the past year. A character is offered wine during dinner. Two characters drink beer. One chapter starts with the following quote from W.C. Fields: Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite, and furthermore, always carry a small snake.
Frightening or Intense Things – A character has a pregnancy scare. Someone’s great-aunt had a stroke. A character suspects her brother needs anti-depressants.
Your spoiler isn’t working for me. I’m curious what your concerns were–I definitely thought this one was pretty weak and seemed phoned in (the book, not your review!). It acknowledged that the reading public will pay a lot of money to watch Tibby be Tibby and Lena be Lena, and by gum she’ll give it to us!
This one is, as you know, the one I couldn’t finish. I think I read half a chapter before putting it down. Glad there’s a spoiler so I can know the end without reading!
Sorry! I’m still working on figuring out the right code to do a spoiler, but for now, I’ve put my complaints after the jump.
Ah, now that I’ve read the spoiler/after the jump, I wholeheartedly agree with you and am so, so glad I didn’t read the damn book. It would make me feel inferior and as though I’d made all the wrong choices, as you know.