All the Summer Girls

A little over a month ago I had a few extra minutes and I popped into the library to browse and ended up walking out with two books, All the Summer Girls by Meg Donohue and South of Broad by Pat Conroy.  I needed something light so I started with All the Summer Girls and basically read it all last Sunday.

A great piece of literature it s not, but a quick read out in the sun on a summer/spring day, it will do.

Description: In Philadelphia, good girl Kate is dumped by her fiance the day she learns she is pregnant with his child. In New York City, beautiful stay-at-home mom Vanessa is obsessively searching the Internet for news of an old flame. And in San Francisco, Dani, the aspiring writer who can't seem to put down a book--or a cocktail--long enough to open her laptop, has just been fired... again.

In an effort to regroup, Kate, Vanessa, and Dani retreat to the New Jersey beach town where they once spent their summers. Emboldened by the seductive cadences of the shore, the women being to realize how much their lives, and friendships, have been shaped by the choices they made one fateful night on the beach eight years earlier--and the secrets that only now threaten to surface.

I never felt a pull towards any of the characters.  They all seemed to be huge into self-pity. I more wanted to know what happened the night Colin died and why everyone blamed themselves.  They were basically all spoiled selfish people but the mystery of Colin was intriguing.

The writing confused me at times too.  Different chapters were narrated by the different girls, but sometimes it seemed like it changed from first person to third person and it just was kinda blah.

Also, so Kate is pregnant.  She is at the beach, at a bar with friends who are picking up guys.  A guy picks her up.  A guy who is 7 years younger than her and doesn't mind that she's 'not into' the party scene.  Then she finally tells him she's pregnant and he never appears in the book again.  What was the point of this plot line? 1) Not believable that this dude who is like 22 right out of college would want to try HARD to hook up with an older chick who doesn't seem that into  it.  2)If by some chance he is madly weirdly in love with her, he should make another entrance in the book after that revelation and declare his love or tell her good luck in life or something. 

I guess I just felt that the ending shouldn't have been the ending.  It needed more closure/wrapping up of storylines.

A line that I resonated with, "I used to be fearless."

Oh so true.  Sometimes I miss the girl I used to be.  Life and circumstances have beaten away at the fearless girl I used to be and sometimes I miss her and don't know how to get her or even just pieces of her back.

Definite beach read.

What was your last beach read?