Rating: WARTY!
Move along now there's no story here! That's how this book which lacks not only an ending but also a middle and a beginning (the beginning is in a different volume), felt to me.
This is another classic example of how thoroughly stupid and inept Big Publishing&Trade; truly is. Once again we have proof that the cover designer is utterly clueless as to the content of the book they're supposedly designing for. The model on the cover of the copy I read was supposed to be twelve and have curly auburn air. Shah, right! She looks like she's in her early twenties. Her hair is very dark, not auburn, and completely straight.
I know that when you sell out to Big Publishing&Trade; you give up your rights to the cover, but you'd think a quarter century into her career, an author like Judy Blume would have some clout, or at least be competent enough to point out to the publisher that they got it so wrong that it's more of an abuse than a joke.
The story here is part of an unfinished trilogy, and it sounded interesting from the blurb, which means nothing more than that the blurb did its job in tricking a reader into picking up the book. I haven't read the other book in the series. By all accounts it's far better than this one, but after this, I have no desire to read any more of this stuffy nonsense.
Rachel Robinson is a wreck. She's supposedly very smart and something of a prodigy, but she's also highly strung and tends to fret and worry over everything. She's a neatness freak who feels compelled to volunteer for anything and everything at school because her mother - a lawyer, of course - pressures her to excel. She's also the babysitter of choice (not that she has any choice) for babysitting Tarren's infant son Roddy. Yes, he's named Roddy. I don't think any of that excuses her pronounced superiority complex and thoroughly self-centered view of life.
Rachel's dad got his life right: he gave up his lawyer job and changed his profession to teaching history - at Rachel's school. Rachel's older sister Jess has a really bad acne problem which extends beyond the mere condition of her skin, of course, but the real problem with this family is Charles - the oldest brother who was just kicked out of boarding school, and who is in such a constant state of acting-out that you want to seriously kick him in the balls pretty much every time he opens his mouth. The saddest thing is that his parents let him get away with it, and so his sisters suffer. This book is about him. It's not about his sister at all. She's merely the narrator.
Rachel's entire extended family and friends are all having issues. Her cousin Tarren, a single mom who is trying to finish college, is having an affair with one of her professors, who happens to be married. Her friend Steph's single mom is starting to date a guy who Steph dislikes on sight. Rachel's mom is the only one who seems to have it all, since she's just been recommended for a judgeship (which will mean a cut in pay), and she's on the verge of losing it.
The writing overall isn't bad. It's a very fast and simple read. One issue I noticed is that on page 102, there's a conversation between Rachel and cousin Tarren which makes no sense. Rachel comes up with the word 'obstacle' which wasn't in anything Tarren had said, so what this felt like to me was that some lines of the exchange between them went missing during the editing stage and no one noticed! It's not unimportant, either, since the word 'obstacle' is employed as a euphemism a lot in conversations pertaining to Tarren's love life afterwards.
That said, the book is utter nonsense and the ending (so-called) is quite honestly nothing more than a deus ex rectum wherein all these snapping vicious, angry, spitting family members are magically hunky dory. It's complete crap!
