Kept waiting for it to get better! Just maybe too pessimistic on life, I like to read uplifting books. The title and summary looked promising, but not one of my favs. ( )

I enjoyed but didn't love this book. The book follows a Southern debutante, Sarah, from her girlhood in South Carolina through her early thirties in New York. Sarah has issues with substance abuse and abusive men and continually makes poor choices.

The book is narrated in a series of snapshots of Sarah's that at times seems disjointed and slightly confusing. Just as I was really getting a particular point of Sarah's life the chapter would end and jump ahead 5 years. I felt that the book could have been longer and gone into more depth. Despite the book's shortcomings it was still a quick and enjoyable read, however it had the potential to be much better.

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A little sad on the end, but then, I like a good road to a happy ending. ( )

I didn't finish it.
It wasn't at all what I was expecting.
It sounded funny and charming. I usually love books based in the south.
It was too hard to like the main character. ( )

I enjoyed this book more in the beginning than I did at the end. In particular, the one quote that I updated about as having made me laugh. This was on page 28 of my edition. I'm sorry if the quote offends any of the people who receive my updates, it's just the imagery and the description is very good and made me laugh out loud when I read it.
"...Jason's penis."
"Yes."
"It's fucking huge."
I sat back in the spongy plastic of the chair, trying to look nonchalant. Jason, a wiry soccer player, was Eloise's boyfriend of two weeks. I didn't know anything about him other than he was a semisuccessful goalie and his hair was always in his face. "How huge?"
"Approximately the thickness of one of those pickles you get with a club sandwich at Swenson's. We had to use, like, half a container of Vaseline to get it in."
"Oh."
The phone rang again. She stared at me, making sure I understood the magnitude of the situation, and then answered. "Hey." She glanced at me. "Tiny. Go away. Important." So I left, faced with an afternoon that yawned ahead with nothing to do but imagine my sister mounting a giant, lubricated pickle.
(Crouch, 28)

It was fairly descriptive after this as well, just not with any particular images that stuck out to me as much as that one did. Plus, after the main character's younger years, the story jumped around a lot and I think for me that made it lose some of it's appeal. I understand that it ties in with the main character's personality really well, writing in that same sort of way, but the book felt a little lost to me.



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