Lauren’s Comments (group member since Jun 02, 2011)

Lauren’s comments from the Reader's Ink group.

I liked Cora, and I enjoyed how Ms. Moriarty told her backstory. In some ways, it might have been my favorite part of the book. It's made me wonder if I want to read The Orphan Train, which seems like it's everywhere I look right now.

I knew Louise was a real person and almost wish Ms. Moriarty had opted to create a fictional character that was heavily based off of Ms. Brooks - I feel like she could have done more with the story if she hadn't been limited by Ms. Brooks's actual life. For example, I think they could have stretched out the time in New York (the whole reason I wanted to read the book!).

Same here - I wanted more out of their time in New York together. I felt like there was a lot of missed opportunity.

Husband, lover, sons … what did we think about the men surrounding Cora?

After the summer in New York, the novel switches gears to showcasing decades of Cora's life with real-life events grounding her experience. How did this type of storytelling work for everyone?

Thoughts on Cora?

In recent years, more and more novels feature real-life people as fictional characters (we've even read a few in this club). How did you like the inclusion of Louise Brooks in The Chaperone? She played a relatively minor role as compared to, say, Louisa May Alcott in March. Did you feel the use of a real-character was necessary to tell the story within The Chaperone?

As always: What rating will you give The Chaperone and why?

She was young, but even when we were mid-20s, all of us had scattered in different directions (heck, that started our senior year).

I do wish we had seen more into the "too many choices" paradigm. I've been thinking about it a lot, and there's truth to it. My own life and my jumping between different career options attests to that. It's hard because being able to make a choice out of infinite options requires really knowing who you are, and I don't think many people know that at 20 or 22.

I liked the idea of this radical feminist ending up under the sway of a controlling woman (mirroring the sort of patriarchal down-with-marriage relationship April would denounce if it were heterosexual) but, as you said, April was such a caricature that the it lacked all bite.

With Bree, wouldn't it have been interesting if she broke up with the college girlfriend, had the same arc of flirting with guys … but ended the book with a different woman?

I'm so torn about this book. On of the one hand, it made me ache to see my college girls and brought to mind our college years in a wonderful way. For me, eliciting that sort of emotional reaction is a big point in a book's favor. I don't think it's easy to do.

But … absent that emotional connection, I didn't love it. I feel like Ms. Sullivan tried to do too much, and I never quite felt the connection between the protagonists that was supposed to ground the book.

I'm not sure I could pick a favorite, but I abhorred April. I hated how the author wrote her, I hated her decisions … my fingers are crossed that the page after the book ended was Sally calling in the nurse and asking to change her daughter's name (and yes, it bugged me that her dead mom got relegated to the middle name, even ignoring the reveal of April's felony).

In my head, April goes to jail for a long time and comes out still liberal but possessing at least a modicum of actual intelligence. She becomes a prison reformer, vowing to end the abuse of female prisoners.

Um, my group of college friends was loads more interesting than this bunch.

But here's what bugged me: not a single one of my college friends is doing what they thought they'd do their first year of college (correct me if I'm wrong, Ash). Sure, there are parts of those original dreams in what they do now, but all of us ended up in places either slightly or entirely different than where we planned.

And the funny thing is? We all seemed to end up in the perfect place for us (or are in the process of getting there). The girl who was planning to go into patent law after majoring in science ended up getting a PhD in science and works as a business consultant. The feminist ended up as the suburban mom, complete with taking her husband's name (not that either of those things make someone less of a feminist, just that she's the one who ended up with the most "traditional" lifestyle). The girl with the undecided major who ended up in politics while vowing to never, ever be an attorney has a law degree.

None of the characters in Commencement moved from what they thought they wanted at 18 and where they were at 26. Sally veered close to that, but there wasn't enough about why she wanted to be a doctor to make an impact on me.

Even Bree, although she "changed teams," still seemed unable to not be in a relationship.

I do think there's something about having too many choices that it can be overwhelming. But I never saw that in this book because none of them shifted from what they wanted to do or asked "what else is out there?"

Of the ones I read, I liked Beauty Queens, Revenge …, Gift from the Sea, Foreign Affairs, and Where'd You Go Bernadette. I'm honestly not sure I can pick a favorite.

Like Ashley, my least favorite is Circus in Winter. I liked parts of it, but I felt like it had a ton of missed potential.

For all I would probably find Mrs. Traynor obnoxious if I met her in real life, I thought her the most sympathetic character in the book: she's intelligent, used to controlling things and being successful (methinks Will might have taken after his Mum) and yet, for the past two years, her entire world has been out of her control. Her daughter is on the other side of the world and blaming her for Will's decision, her son is paralyzed and suicidal, and her husband is only staying with her because he doesn't want to look like the bad guy.

On top of all of that, by respecting her son's wishes, she not only loses him but potentially puts her career at risk. While she might not be too upset about the husband leaving, I finished Me Before You and my heart broke for her.

(Louisa - whatever. She now has money now, and, sure, she cared about Will, but it was six months, and maybe she'll always miss him to some extent, but my guess is she'll get over it and get married and life will go on and all that jazz. Plus, the potential stigma of Will's suicide won't attach to her.)

But Mrs. Traynor - if she were a real person, how would she recover from this? From the day she received that phone call about the accident followed by not knowing if Will would live to the partial victory of him living but almost resenting her, I can't help but think her life has been a waking nightmare. And now she comes home from Switzerland and what? Where does she go from here?

Had she, at times, wished that perhaps Will had died the day of the accident and then, when he attempted suicide, she felt somehow responsible? How does she reconcile that now that he is dead? Is looking out at the annex painful? Does she move and try to start over in a new place? Or does she want to stay in the place where she has happy memories of her family before everything went belly up? Does she still have friends or have many of them drifted away over the past two years or may not want to associate with a woman who allowed her son to commit suicide?

If you can't tell, I would absolutely read a book about Mrs. Traynor and how she comes to terms with what happened. But maybe written by John Green.

I wasn't surprised at all: Ms. Moyes made his condition so obvious that it was understandable why he chose as he did. I was more surprised by Louisa's shock.

I wish Will's condition had been written into a more of a gray area: not that he would be able to recover the ability to walk or anything that extreme, but in a place where his decision would be more controversial than it was. It would have made Louisa's objections seem more respectful and less self serving.

Assisted suicide is a complicated issue, and I very much hope to never be in a situation that requires me to decide. As a bystander, though, I find the interesting cases involving assisted suicide to be those where the timing and other issues are not especially cut and dry.

Two stars for me. It was entertaining and I enjoyed parts, but even when I was reading, I couldn't shake comparisons to The Fault in Our Stars and The Universe Versus Alex Woods, both of which danced circles around Me Before You. So that didn't help, because I kept going "I just read better versions of this plot and themes!"

It was three stars when I finished, but then I read a few reviews. And the more reviews I read (both good and bad), the more I gravitated to the critical reviews, because they brought up some really excellent points.

Then it hit me: This story has a really weird message. Louisa doesn't have to do anything to suddenly go on adventures or go to college: Will makes all of that possible. I mean, yeah, it's sad Will died and all, but it's kind of the perfect ending for Louisa: she gets a bunch of cash and isn't tied to a man with serious medical issues. And she gets to be the grieving girlfriend (because you know she's totally going to play that up).

Also, Patrick totally dodged a bullet with Louisa. Dude should thank his lucky stars he escaped her before the ugly divorce.

I agree, but I couldn't escape a niggling thought that the story was told from Bee's perspective, and I think Bee wanted her Dad to be a hero.

Part of the downside of the ending is that it's difficult to get that resolution to show Elgin's true character.

Same. I don't dislike open endings (I just finished another book that had an open ending, and it was the perfect choice for the book: as a reader, I had a closure but an awareness that the ending was really more of a beginning that could go in a thousand different ways).

My feeling is, when a writer opts for a more open ending, it requires the book be that much tighter in comparison: plots need to not have holes or inconsistencies because then the open ending is less clever and more seems like another plot hole in the story.

To me, Bernadette leaned a little too close to "plot hole" ending - it wasn't, but there were enough inconsistencies and open questions to leave the ending as less clever and more premature, if that makes sense.

I loved the twist on Audrey's character and how she went from villain to savior of Bernadette's story. I would love to know if the transformation lasts or if it's merely temporary.