Girls in Trucks

by Katie Crouch

Sarah Walters is a less-than-perfect debutante. She tries hard to follow the time-honored customs of the Charleston Camellia Society, as her mother and grandmother did, standing up straight in cotillion class and attending lectures about all the things that Camellias don't do. (Like ride with boys in pickup trucks.)But Sarah can't quite ignore the barbarism just beneath all that propriety, and as soon as she can she decamps South Carolina for a life in New York City. There, she and her fellow displaced Southern friends try to make sense of city sophistication, to understand how much of their training applies to real life, and how much to the strange and rarefied world they've left behind.When life's complications become overwhelming, Sarah returns home to confront with matured eyes the motto "Once a Camellia, always a Camellia" -- and to see how much fuller life can be, for good and for ill, among those who know you best.Girls in Trucks introduces an irresistable, sweet, and wise voice that heralds the arrival of an exciting new talent.

Genres: Fiction, Chick Lit, Contemporary, Southern, Book Club, Adult, Adult Fiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 2008

About the author

Katie Crouch is the New York Times bestselling author of Girls in Trucks, Men and Dogs, and Abroad. Embassy Wife was optioned and is currently in development with 20th Television for series. She has also written essays for The New York Times, Slate, Salon, and Tin House. A former resident of Namibia and San Francisco, Crouch now lives in Vermont with her family and teaches creative writing at Dartmouth College.

Follow her on Instagram at @katiecrouchwrites.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's a wonderful passage in Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird" in which Anne sends a manuscript off to an editor, who rejects it with this withering rejoinder: "You have made the mistake of thinking that everything that has happened to you is interesting."

That pretty much sums this one up.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one falls into the "Don't Judge a Book by its Cover" category - I thought the cover art and title were very promising. Even the subject matter appealed to me - the story of a debutante growing up in South Carolina and her relationships with her fellow society girls and their quest to find suitable husbands. Of course, I expected it to be light, but mostly it was just disappointing. There were glimmers of humor and good writing - but many of the issues were dead-ends. The main character, Sarah, has a brilliant and beautiful older sister who goes off to Yale, only to fall in love with a grad student from Madagascar. Issues of race and abuse are introduced, but never really followed up on. Sarah herself has a string of boyfriends with strange sexual fetishes, while her best friend succumbs to heroin (spelled "heroine" in the book - perhaps on purpose to make a point?). Sarah is an unlikeable protagonist, clueless in relationships and incredibly shallow. I expected her to have an epiphany of sorts, or to grow-up or learn a lesson. But, by the end of the book, she is still just tedious. Such a waste of a beautiful cover.

[Imogen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Look, the only reason I don't have a bunch of Kathy Acker tattoos is that I'm broke, and that's also the only reason I don't collect Dennis Cooper first editions. The only two reasons I don't talk about liking Chuck Palahniuk are the anti-intellectual implications of joining The Cult and the fact that, often, his books are stupid. I also prefer novels about zombie apocalypses to books about most other things.

I still think Melissa Bank should be canonized. She is a goddam GENIUS and I think that if she were a boy writing about boys' lives in the same way that she is a girl writing about girls' lives, she would be, like, I don't know, fucking Hemingway or something.

I don't think anybody else noticed it, because her books were huge right when it was a goddam THING to call books 'chick lit' instead of 'novels' and thereby dismiss them as legitimate fiction. Misogyny! Gross. I feel like I used to have this conversation all the time, about how het women can't just write about het women's lives without being dismissed as 'women's writing,' so folks like Ms Banks and- there is a point- Katie Crouch get relegated to the 'not serious' pile. I don't have those conversations so much any more 'cause I got old and apathetic.

So yeah. I liked this book a lot. There's no magical realism, no vicious social commentary on the state of America (though there is some on the state of the American South, but I don't feel qualified to say anything about that). It's about a girl who is a debutante and then grows up and is a fuckup/mess, in a very middle-class-alcoholic way. I think it's great that everybody drinks all the time and then it's bad for them; I think it's great that she has poisonous relationship after poisonous relationship and never really learns much; I think it's great that, at the end of the book (spoiler, I guess?), she goes back home and it seems great and your heart all swells up over the concept of home and rightness and family and then, right at the very end, she's like, 'well, that doesn't really work either.'

I just like that she's this straight girl and the prose is engaging and there are no solutions presented anywhere, and people die in this totally matter of fact way, and basically Northerners are made out to be assholes and so are Southerners, except affectionately.

My point is just, Melissa Bank is a very obvious, blatant touchstone for Katie Crouch, and I love that, because Melissa Bank never writes anything any more and she got the lady lit thing right by writing about how messy lives are instead of how much having a boy would fix that mess, and I'm glad Katie Crouch picked that up and went someplace a little bit bleaker with it.

[Tracy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Waste of an afternoon. I really wanted to like this book, and I did in the beginning. The author just left way too much hanging. She goes into detail, getting you involved with characters, and then never mentions them again. Poorly written, with a horrible ending. Totally unbelievable ending. Wierd.

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

*SO* disappointing. I was really, really, looking forward to reading this book. The level of disconnect between the book summary and the actual plot is so huge that I'm tempted to believe that someone just made up the summary based on a third-hand description of the book. When a book is billed as being having "more gasps, sobs, laughs, and surprises in [its] pages than in most people's entire bookshelves", then I expect it to deliver! Instead, I got depressing tripe.

The plot is poorly constructed, with a wafer thin premise. Plot lines are introduced and never mentioned again. The characters are ALL unlikable. The writing is almost unreadable at times, with multiple changes in voice, POV, etc. Now I'm mad I actually finished reading the stupid thing. I'm not quite at the White Oleander lever of hate yet, though it's pretty close.

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

The only reason I gave it a star is because the cover is good. Other than that - One of the worst books I ever read.

First of all I have to say that I was very intrigued to read this, I thought the cover synopsis looked great, and the idea of the camillias was cool, even the cover looked cool. I don't know, maybe I was expecting more of a yaya sisterhood type book.... But I REALLY detested this book.

I didn't like the characters at all, not one of them. (well maybe the exception to that would be Bitsy after she got cancer, I sorta liked the chapter titled "Bitsy's List"- that seemed real, I wish she would have written more about her Cancer fight.) I hated the way it jumped around from scene to scene, time frame to time frame, 1st person to narrator. It reminded me of those stories where one person starts off with a few sentences, and then a new person adds on, and it grows from there. The whole thing made no sense to me. There was no plot and no direction so it was very hard to look forward to anything.

I thought Sarah's character was pathetic. Not an endearing pathetic, but an annoying pathetic. I didn't understand how she could get practically gang raped by a group of boys and hardly react. When she is older her friend gets cancer, she shows no concern. Her other friend almost dies of heroine. No concern again. I cannot understand why the author wouldn't have used these events to develop a more memorable character? Instead, the author jumps around all over the place, bring up new characters out of the blue, like Rob, who was suddenly the one guy who always loved her that she knew in college ???? where did he come from? And why does the author stop writing in first person? And whatever happened to Eloise? She just kinda gets dropped after we find out she is on marriage #2 - what the heck happened to marriage #1????
It just drove me crazy!

Honestly I never would have finished this book if it wasn't for the fact that it was for my book club book. I really don't remember ever being so frustrated with a storyline!

[fleegan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The back cover lies about how funny it is. But humor isn't everything, and I could've over looked it's unhumorousness if I could've at LEAST liked the main character, Sarah. She was pathetic, and then, when she gets older and knows that she's pathetic and remains pathetic? Well, I don't like that.

Plus I didn't like how these important things would happen in the book, for example, her sister goes off to college and is going to marry some guy from Madagascar who is kind of abusive and then, you never hear about what happened with that. But it's years later and she's at her sister's wedding (not to the Madagascar guy) and then you never hear about the sister again. Or like where her pal Charolotte, who was her roommate and best pal for years, has a heroin problem. But it's only flippantly mentioned in a, "and that's why i haven't talked to her in years." There were several plot points like that that should've either been fleshed out more or eliminated from the book completely.

There was one part, a really small part, where all of a sudden the book is being told from someone else's point of view. And I mean, I got it, right? I understood who it was supposed to be and all, but since she didn't do that with any of the other Camelias (that I ever picked up on) it seemed really out of place. That one part would have made a good short story, just you know, not a good chapter in this book.

So I dunno, the main character was just so selfish and self-destructive and it doesn't seem like she will try to change, and I would've like to have seen some personal growth is all. Lesson, is all I'm sayin'. But that's what I get from choosing books by their covers.

[Toni · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't usually bother taking issue with negative comments that others have made about books that I've enjoyed because the way I feel about books is the way I feel about people: I have my opinion of them and others have theirs, and it's not going to help to argue if we don't agree.

That being said, I think Katie Crouch is taking some undeserved criticism from readers who seem to have failed to remember that old chesnut: "Don't judge a book by its cover." I was flabbergasted to read the number of reviews which complained that the cover art had misled people into reading the book.

Girls in Trucks was admittedly not what I expected from the back cover summary, but that didn't take away from my reading experience! I like Crouch's style, I liked the vignette-like chapters, and I for one was happy that nothing was resolved.

Life is not perfect. It doesn't wrap up neatly into a carefully constructed little package. The choices the main character made were self destructive and repeated again and again. As much as people don't want to admit it, many of us don't learn from our mistakes. Many of us are less than happy a lot of the time. I don't believe that Katie Crouch should be lambasted for telling the story of a believably imperfect woman and giving us glimpses into the lives of those around her.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel even though it sometimes left me with a sinking feeling and I worried for Sarah at the end when I thought she had finally found happiness but she didn't agree. I look forward to reading more of Crouch's work in the future.

[Lauren · Rating 1 out of 5]

Despite the misleading summary on its back cover, Girls in Trucks is a collection of chapters surrounding Sarah Walters, her friends, and her family as they fail at romance. From her public sexual assault as a child by her evil cousin to her stalking of her abusive ex-boyfriend years after they broke up, Sarah’s experiences are simultaneously horrific and uninteresting. The men in Sarah, her sister, and her friends’ lives are boring, weird, and mean. The only thing worse than these men is reading 256 pages about them.

I stuck it out basically to write this horrible review.

In some ways, it reminded me of a really horrible version of Girls in White Dresses. Girls in White Dresses was one of my favorite books from last year, telling the story of a group of friends who graduate from college thinking the world is their oyster only to have their dreams altered when reality sets in (a full review can be found here), and basically I loved it for how much it mirrored my own life. They both follow a group of girlfriends as they grow up and mature and change point of view with almost every chapter, but that’s just about where the similarities end. None of the characters in Girls in Trucks really seem to mature, they aren’t interesting enough to make you actually care about what happens to them, every one of them has serious addiction and dependency problems that are swept under the rug, and the only problems that seem to plague them are solely romance-related. Plus, the whole book seems to read like one mistake after another. “Hmm, I slept with this random guy and woke up to find his angry wife screaming at me in their bedroom? How about I move to South America to chase some other loser!” I felt like banging my head against the wall the whole time. To make it worse, Girls in Trucks tries to pass itself off as Southern fiction, and it is so disappointing in its attempt that it insults the entire genre.

I wouldn’t recommend Girls in Trucks at all. For the very few women on Amazon who gave it great reviews because they found it easy to relate to, I will keep your personal lives in my prayers.

[Betsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This past Sunday's SF Chronicle review did a very good job of summing up some of my qualms as well as some of the better parts of this book. The fact that the narrative voice changes part way through from 1st to 3rd to 2nd person is jarring. Parts of the novel felt like a cluster of connected short stories. As the SF Chron reviewer aptly pointed out, the story about Annie and her boyfriend and the dog was the best writing in the book. I kept reading because I still wanted to know what would happen to each of these characters but I didn't like it that the author left me hanging when Sarah goes to visit her sister at Yale, for instance and then never really revisits what happened to the sister except very obliquely. I think that the author has a lot of promise and that her next book, if more carefully edited, could be quite good.

[Molly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked this book for all of its southern references; the author is from charleston and was really good at picking up tiny details that seemed very southern, and very accurate to me. there were definitely a couple of sentences or ideas where I was like, 'yeah!'. but the story was depressing, and disjointed. Each chapter was from different (usually chronological) periods of the protagonist's life, from preteens to early thirties, but sometimes they left off where I wished she would have continued, or they were seemingly random events that seemed extraneous. anyhow, I liked the authors voice enough that I'll read whatever she puts out next, but this book was overall disappointing.

[Deb · Rating 1 out of 5]

The beautiful cover pulled me into this one which started out pretty well. Sarah Walters is raised to be a debutante and a member of the Camellia Society. She's pretty likeable until she goes off to college. Things change for her ALOT then and into the future. Indiscriminate sex, bondage, a drug addicted friend, single motherhood due to a practically unknown father, and a mother coming out of the closet all are issues almost gratuitously thrown into the plot. It was a quick read, though. I read it in a day. Blah, blah, blah...

[Lynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch is not typical "chick lit." If you are looking for a feel-good, it's all about sisterhood, I'm kissing frogs until I meet my prince and then I'm going to squeeze out two perfect mini-mrs and mini-mr, put this book down and keep looking. Crouch's main character, Sarah Walters does not have a perfect life, perfect friends or perfect family. She makes mistakes, many mistakes. She fumbles in her love life and her professional life. The novel leads us on a journey with Sarah at about age ten to Sarah mid-thirties during which events unfold that will upset and shock the average reader but also inspire empathy and humor at times.

I've read a lot of the recent reviews of this book on Goodreads. Yes, it is true, the blurb on the back of the book may be a bit too "rose -colored glasses," but "biting humor and keen observation" should suggest that the reader expect more than the usual romantic drivel. I was a bit surprised that a couple of readers felt the writing to be poor. Crouch has carefully crafted the lives of the characters. At times, I wished a scene might develop a little longer but I definitely did not find the writing to be rough or quickly thrown together. It takes talent to relay an understanding of a character with few lines. Crouch has filled this novel with several characters so dynamic and three-dimensional to the extent that I wouldn't mind reading a spin-off or two.

I love and agree with this quote from Peggy McMullen of the Portland Oregonian: "Sarah's voice is a funny, slim stiletto to the heart of friendship, desire, and love. Crouch's spare prose and sharp dialogue flay open a universal need to belong, whether to a place, a person, or your own true self." I feel this hits the head of the novel's nail straight on. I've enjoyed this novel and expect to enjoy further works by Katie Crouch.

[Pam · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought this book was highly over rated and poorly written. Not at all what I expected it to be. There were moments when the author's humor shone through and those sections were good; however, the book never really went anywhere.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't decide whether to give this two stars or three. I enjoyed the book, but have several issues with it. The narrating style was inconsistent and kept changing. Chapters skipped around in time, which was confusing, and important events weren't always explained. The main character -- Sarah Walters -- wasn't entirely likeable. I kept waiting for her to grow up. And the end was kind of ruined by a huge dose of Sarah's cynicism - you'll have to read it to see what I mean!

[rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Girls in Trucks, to my great disappointment after seeing it called "chick lit with a bite" elsewhere on the internets, is very Writer's Workshop-y. I would pay homage to Southern placation and say "not that that's a bad thing!" but judging by this book's cumulative Goodreads score of 2.83, it's...not good.

The book's narrator is Sarah Walters, a debutante from modern South Carolina, trying to negotiate her life in and out of the South even though her social league and fake Southern gentility don't really fit her personality. Sarah stays friends with the girls in her league, the Camellias, because that's just what Southern belles "do" -- even though she doesn't necessarily like all of them. She lives up North in NYC and adjusts to that way of being. She, the other Camellias, and her gorgeous older sister Eloise meet a variety of unsuitable men and muddle through those relationships to varying results. Many characters in the book have a whole lot more scandal going on under their surfaces than it would appear.


The problem with Girls in Trucks is that even though the story Crouch is telling is everyday interpersonal stuff and not extraordinarily dramatic, Crouch tries to be ambitious with perspective and truth. She crams in a couple of oddly placed second person chapters (which never work outside of the most precious children's books and Then We Came to the End) and then questions Sarah's narrative reliability at the end by stepping outside of her for an omniscient narrator chapter that has some minor details from the story's history tweaked. These techniques just flop. They're pointless. I have no idea what Crouch is trying to say by using them, except to reinforce that Sarah is a trainwreck, which we already knew. Switching up narrators just muddies and confuses what is otherwise a well-written, straightforward, quietly pathetic sort of story, told in wisps and glances of relationship dynamics.

Which is another problem I had with the book, kind of. Some relationships -- Sarah and most of her men -- are fully explored. But one of the most interesting parts of the book, Sarah's Yalie sister Eloise's collegiate relationship with a controlling older graduate student from Madagascar, is only superficially delved into in an early chapter. Once the enigmatic Most Popular Girl of her high school, Eloise's boyfriend gives her smoldering looks and can't keep his hands off of her, but he also forces her to serve tea "because that's what the women do" in his country and insists on calling her "Lois" even though that's not her name. She loses weight and dresses down. She starts telling him to fuck off at an Ethiopian restaurant, in front of Sarah, and then moments later reveals that she is going to marry him so that he can keep his student visa. Sarah worries for her. And...that's it. We hear nothing else about Madagascar grad student, except for the fact that they get divorced after he "almost kills her" (in a throwaway line, no less). And I got so confused, because it seems like Crouch wants to say something about abuse, like she wants this book to be something meaningful, and then...end of anecdote, never to come up again. What?

Frankly, writing out this review and thinking about the book in retrospect, I'm surprised that this was its final draft.

[Bob Redmond · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well-crafted novel narrated by an ex-debutante from South Carolina. It's not quite coming-of-age, because the story arcs the narrator into her 30's--although that fact itself demonstrates lots about the story: the narrator never really achieves a self-definition except after 20 years, and then by default rather than bold choices. To the extent that the character is similarly, passively developed, this novel fails. On the other hand, perhaps it is a statement about the generation, the south, or something more elusive. The story does take several surprise plot twists, but ultimately the grad-school gloss on this novel makes it so unlike a truck (or a girl in a truck) and much more like a 1996 Ford Taurus: efficient, utilitarian, and safe. P.S. For a first novel that is still full of Dionysius, try Jeff Parker's OVENMAN.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was so hoping this would be a fun, southern story. Unfortunately, I felt like it was a compilation of short stories about the protagonist- none of which had proper endings. I kept holding onto a thread of hope that the story would redeem itself, but it didn't. It was just a depressing tale of drinking, drugs, and failed romances- not exactly an enjoyable read.

[Mateja · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

The story aside, this was a very unique book, at least unlike anything I've ever read before. It has a very eclectic writing style. Some chapters read like a "how to" manual, some are written in second person as in "you will..." and it gives the feel of someone reading what the future holds for you, while other chapters are written in a "normal", regular narrative. I enjoyed this very much.

And the book itself isn't just one main storyline and a couple of smaller, less important ones. This book is basically a compilation of stories told about the main characters, Sarah Walters. Each chapter focuses on a certain event or person and how it shaped her life, not just how it influenced her when it happened but how much importance it carried in her later life. It's not written in any time sequence. The individual chapters jump from one point of Sarah's life to another, but looking at the book as a whole it does mark her progress from a teen to an adult.

But the writting style aside I had quite a few problems with the actual content of the stories. I enjoyed the first third of the book, where Sarah was mainly a teenager and later college student. I liked how different she was from the other people in her life (that were slightly rasist and very uptight). But as she became an adult or should I say attempted to become one I quickly lost all the love I had for her.

You know how a main character in a movie or a book usually has a friend/sister that's a total fuck up. She likes to drink a lot and she loves her pot a little too much. And when she hits 30 she becomes the stereotypical single girl, desperate to land a husband. She's always drawn to guys that treat her like crap or maybe the guys are great be she just doesn't know what to do in a relationship. And when it all falls apart there is the trusty vodka and a joit waiting for her and a string of one night stands to fill the emptiness inside her that even antidepressant can't help her deal with. Yeah, that's our main character in Girls in Trucks. That's pretty much why I didn't like her.

The ending wasn't happy and it wasn't sad either. There was just a tone of resignation to Sarah's fate and future that left me unsatisfied. Why build up all the disappointments and mistakes in Sarah's life without there being a silver lining at the end?

[Sarav · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let me first say that I am not a "literary reader." I think that I would have enjoyed this book more, if I was.
For me, this book is the epitome of "don't judge a book by its cover."
I was so disappointed. The cover is gorgeous! The photo spoke to me of a heroine who was not going to suffer fools gladly. I also love trucks and thought she would be tough and tomboyish and fun. She was none of these things. The author describes her (in the interview in the back) as "brave." To me, she was painfully whiny, wishy-washy and at times frighteningly neurotic. Sara Gruen can do neurotic characters that you still find loveable. I didn't find this person loveable--pitiable but not loveable.
It is also written in an interesting, but as a reader (again, not a literary one) jarring manner. It starts as first person, then the whole college experience is told in one chapter, in 3rd person, then a chapter about a friend that seems to have nothing to do with anything except to tell you what happened to the friend. Then back to first person. I eventually gave up about four chapters from the end, and did what I have never before done with a book and just read the last chapter.
While the ending is not what I had hoped for, it was consistent and actually summed up the character with a bit of hope and maturity.
There are some fun scenes and laugh out loud moments-- "Bitsy pretended that she and the rest of the guests had not just seen my boyfriend's penis."
I have just returned from a writing workshop and confirmed absolutely that there may be some books--The Red Tent and The Time Keeper's Wife that are Literary fiction that I did enjoy. But mostly I'm a commercial fiction lover. Give me that happy ending every time!

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the format of Girls in Trucks. It was told in related short stories, which I think really worked. i like how it went in-depth to a few important moments, but didn't try to follow every single moment. We were able to see the main character's life very clearly by looking at these few snapshots.

The characters didn't really like themselves or each other, and I could see why because I didn't really like them, either. I'm glad that Crouch started with the story about them being young girls forced to go to debutante class, because it was certainly the most sympathetic I felt toward them through the whole book, and it set me up to like them, even if they ruined that pretty quickly as young adults.

I thought that the problem I would have with it would be the whole Southern debutante thing, but they probably should have stayed in Charleston and continued being Camellias! They met too much evil out there in the big, scary North! It was certainly a cultural education for me to read about a relatively modern day experience with something I'd only encountered in historical fiction. I think the book did a decent job of investigating what happens when girls are raised to be debutantes, but the larger society doesn't operate the same way. The largest problem in this for these girls is that they are raised to find husbands immediately, but they understand that this is an outdated practice. So how do you find love if the way you were raised to is extinct?

The girls' friendships, though dysfunctional, did feel very real. They compete with each other, support each other when it's convenient, lose touch for years at a time. It wasn't exactly a good model for female friendships, but it showed a pessimistic realism.

[Carrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Girls in Trucks follows Sarah as she grows up in the Southern debutante life. The South Carolina women in her family have all been part of the Camellia Society, and hold fast to the expectations and traditions involved with being a Camellia. Sarah and her girlfriends attend the classes they are supposed to, and dress as they are expected, but some of them can't help but be attracted to the things Camellias aren't supposed to do, like ride in trucks with boys who would never marry a Camellia. The novel follows Sarah as she grows up, attends college in the north, and lives in NYC. She must learn to navigate through her relationships with men, girlfriends, and the family still home in the south. Sarah must also accept the fact that no matter where you run, you still carry with you the way you were raised.

This is the first novel by Katie Crouch, and it's reminiscent of films like Hope Floats, and various books written about debutantes. The characters are interesting, and will not always do what the reader will expect of them, but you are often left hanging with their storylines, never to find out how situations were resolved. I had hoped to like it more, but it was an okay read. I found myself getting frustrated with the main character and sometimes being more interested in other characters because she got so tiresome.

If you want a fast read, this one might do, but there are a lot better books out there. If you like debutante books, I'd recommend Gloria by Keith Maillard over this one (which is also longer).

[Kathy KS · Rating 1 out of 5]

Although the original premise sounded promising, I found the book to be disappointing. The main character seems to be whiny throughout, with no backbone or actual desire to improve her life. Although this is hyped as a tale of a debutante "rebelling" against old-fashioned ideas, the main character actually illustrates a woman that believes you must find love (e.g., find a man) and when you are unhappy you simply drop out and drink/drug yourself up. Never mind that some actual gumption might make good things happen, especially when she started from a life of some privilege.

I actually didn't care or like any of the characters in the book. My husband asks why I didn't just stop reading. Well, I figure that surely she was going to mature and find her way, and life would look rosier by the end. Without revealing whether or not that happens directly, I will finish with a comment made by a co-worker. After hearing my description of the book, she said, "oh, it's an Oprah book..."

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

One word... weird. Unfortunately for me, I'm one to judge a book by it's cover. I saw this and read the quick description on the jacket and thought it would be a cute Southern novel. Well, I was wrong. I ended up finishing it, but was hard pressed to really like it. The writing was just odd and I'm still wondering why the author included a few of the stories that she did.

[Annie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Beatiful cover and blurb made me think this was going to be a delightful rebel daughter story. It wasn't. In fact parts of it were downright creepy. Main character was unlikable. Just a dumb privileged girl making stupid decisions over and over. By the end of the book she wasn't any better; but now she has a daughter of her own to screw up.

[Miriam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was immediately engaged in this book. It reminded me of THE GIRLS' GUIDE TO HUNTING AND FISHING in only the good ways and not the annoying ways. It fell apart for me a little at the end when it skips around in time a lot, but all the individual parts of it were oh-so-satisfying.

[Bridgit · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm way too old to read books about women who keep falling into toxic relationships. Plus the writing did nothing for me. At all. Ugh. I hope I have not permanently insulted whoever it was that gave me this book. :)

[Kacey · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just couldn't get into this book at all.....the cover art had sucked me in & I just couldn't get past chapter 2 :/ maybe I'll give it another go when I don't have a huge stack of books waiting to be read?

[Tiffany · Rating 1 out of 5]

That was a horrible book. I don't even know what the point was?! Everything was disjointed and the main character, Sarah never had direction or purpose and she never found it! Don't bother with this book, it's terrible.

[MissBecka Gee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would.