Loved this book! Be prepared to be surprised/shocked in the first 50 pages with just how 'straight' Jane Green is with her readers. A bit into it...this way of talking to the the reader will grow on you and then you'll quite enjoy the fact that you really get to be inside this girls head...finding out just what she's thinking and most of the time you'll probably relate. It's just all of those things you think about but never really put into words or don't have the guts to say aloud...
My favorite parts/quotes:
"You gradually get over the pain. It doesn't go away, not for a long time, but it becomes easier to live with. One morning you wake up and he's not the first thing on your mind. And then a few months down the line you realize you've made it through half the day without thinking of him. Sometimes it takes months, sometimes years, but eventually you reach a point when you only think about them occassionally. You manage to do this because you don't see them, you don't hear about them, you try not to think about them. And then you bump into them walking down the street, or someone unexpected mentions their name . . . and the memories come flooding back. But memories also become less painful in time"
"Here's my theory on men and women. When a man meets a woman he decides within around thirty seconds whether or not he finds her attractive. If he doesn't, they become friends. If he does, they might become friends, but the potential for them to become lovers never quite goes away. When a woman meets a man she decides within around thirty seconds whether or not she finds him attractive. Even if she doesn't, they become friends, but at any given point in their relationship she could fall in love with him. She could fall in love with him because he's kind, sensitive, and he makes her laugh. Because she grows up and realizes the sexual attraction is not the be-all and end-all to life. Because she finally realizes that she deserves a nice guy. That nice guys aren't all boring. That sometimes they do wonders for your ego, that sometimes they're just what you need."
"Perhaps this is what we need. A dream, a hope for the future, something to aspire to, and perhaps we need to keep replacing this dream with something a little bigger because when we manage to fulfill the dream, we usually find that it's not what we wanted in the first place. Or if it is, it doesn't feel the way we always thought it should. Sometimes, if you're very mixed up, very stupid, or very thoughtless, you screw up the dream just as you get it. You tell yourself you don't deserve it, and you have to start all over again."
Enjoy!