Read for: TBR Challenge & Across the States Challenge (South Carolina)
Synopsis: "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."
My Review: I guess I got the completely wrong impression as to what this book was about. There was definitely nothing "sweet and wise" about the voice. I guess we are supposed to be sympathetic to Sarah, pity her and hope for the best for her, but I just can't bring myself to care. There really wasn't much about the so called training and using it in life out of the south. It was really just a woe is me tale. The other thing that really bothered me other than the character was the writing style, it is so all over the place, it starts out sounding like a diary entry and then it jumps between 1st and 3rd person narration. The time line is also all over the place. It really just wasn't the book for me and I was glad it was a relatively short book and ended quickly.
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."
My Review: I guess I got the completely wrong impression as to what this book was about. There was definitely nothing "sweet and wise" about the voice. I guess we are supposed to be sympathetic to Sarah, pity her and hope for the best for her, but I just can't bring myself to care. There really wasn't much about the so called training and using it in life out of the south. It was really just a woe is me tale. The other thing that really bothered me other than the character was the writing style, it is so all over the place, it starts out sounding like a diary entry and then it jumps between 1st and 3rd person narration. The time line is also all over the place. It really just wasn't the book for me and I was glad it was a relatively short book and ended quickly.
My Rating: By the description I thought this would be a fun, quirky book (thinking along the lines of Sweet Home Alabama movie) but instead it was a real downer. Everything was whining and woe is me, only bad things happen to me, pessimistic view. I was really disappointed. I give it a rating of One Paw.
At first I thought this was the book the movie with Drew Barrymore in it was based on. But that was Riding in Trucks With Boys. Any who, I don't think I'll read this one.
ReplyDeleteIt is really disappointing when you expect one thing but it turns out it is totally different.
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