Sophie, Becca, Harper and Kate have all graduated high school and are looking to fulfill their Year of Dreams as they all head off into the real world. Sophie dreams of becoming a famous actress and heads to California. Kate finds herself digging wells in Africa and butting heads with one of the group leaders who assumes she's a spoiled rich girl. Becca finds her relationship with her boyfriend on rocky ground as her home life is turned upside down. Harper is trying to write the Great American novel, but finds herself still dwelling on her almost relationship with her English teacher. The girls all suddenly realize maybe their dreams weren't quite what they thought they were and maybe things they thought they wanted aren't what they need.
Genre: contemporary
Rating: 2/5
This book frustrated me. It was highly readable and I wanted to know what happened to the characters, mainly because I HATED them all so much. They progressively made stupider and stupider choices, acted ridiculous, acted bitchy, used guys and allowed themselves to be used by guys and ultimately didn't seem to learn much. Sophie is vain and shallow and only earns a slight pass as a character as she begins to realize that her behavior IS shallow. She makes assumptions about her fairly nice roommate Sam and refuses to admit she likes him. Harper gets into a messy "friends with benefits" situation with one of her friends and realizes too late that she actually doesn't have the feelings she thought she did about her English teacher. The very fact that this relationship is even presented as acceptable is baffling to me. There is no "this is wrong" presented about her relationship with him. She's presented as being dishonest with her feelings about her best guy friend and goes into a family tailspin when her father breaks some bones. For the way the family acts about her father's situation I thought it would be MUCH more traumatic than someone falling off a roof and being in traction for a while. Then there's Becca, the most annoying of the characters. She ditches her friends in favor of her boyfriend and becomes one of those obnoxious characters who has no identity outside of him, calling him constantly and talking about nothing but him. She eventually freaks out and does something that majorly hurts him a SECOND time as she had hurt him before and is generally just irrational when it comes to him. Kate is the only character I actually really liked and she was made intolerable by choosing a guy who was so vile I kept hoping he'd get killed off. Darby is arrogant, makes assumptions about Kate, treats her like she can't do anything, insults her, yet she still finds herself attracted to him and ends up kissing him because they're angry at each other. No girl with any sense would be attracted to someone as unpleasant as Darby. This was one of the first books I've ever finished reading because I wanted all the worst for some of the characters.
Wow. That doesn't sound good at all.
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