Kayla Rae Whitaker

I picked up this book on the strength of the reviews I read for it. Given the high praise everywhere I turned, I was expecting a heartwarming novel about female friendship. What I got instead was a novel full of melodrama and disfunction. So much disfunction. And that, above all else, is what soured me on this novel. The writing is decent (though the author overestimates how often people throw up; in this novel the characters are constantly hurling into trash bins), and the characters fairly interesting (even though Mel came across as more of a caricature herself at times). But I quickly grew tired of the fact that just about every relationship in this novel was incredibly disfunctional. Relationships between women, between men and women, between mothers and daughters… all broken in some way and so sad to watch. There was nothing redeeming or uplifting here, and I turned the last page grateful it was over - and sorry I’d wasted so much of my time sticking it out. (It should have ended at least 50 pages earlier!)… (meer)