Not a realistic book. ( )

Allie is a broke college student at Berkeley. Foolishly, she let her boyfriend borrow $7000 which was her tuition and rent payments. When he doesn’t return the money and subsequently breaks up with her, she is desperate. She begs her employer, a dealer, to pay her what he owes, but he tries to convince her to do a few hits of coke first. When he gives her something which causes her to go a bit crazy, she grabs his Wonder bread bag of cocaine and runs off. So begins a wild story of crazy events involving Allie’s mom, dad, best friend Beth, a producer, surfers, and bad guys, as well as rocker Billy Idol.
Fun and crazy story about drugs, family, and recklessness! ( )

Ever start a book - even a book you were really interested in - and find that you just can't get into it? I really tried to get into The Wonder Bread Summer by Jessica Anya Blau, but I gave up about 30 pages in. That's really early, even for me. We start off with Allie, working her job at the dress shop. Well, working might be a stretch. She's in the fitting room with her boss, snorting coke and showing him her tits. You see, she hasn't gotten a paycheck yet, and her boss really wants to see her naked, so maybe? In another 10 or 12 pages she still hasn't gotten her paycheck, but she has absconded with the Wonder Bread bag full of cocaine that her boss had stashed in the fitting room, and she's trying to use some of it to pay for gas to fill up her car.

I can suspend disbelief with the best of them, but just a few pages in and I already hated Allie. At my worst, I can't imagine behaving the way Allie did, and I don't really want to read a book about a character I think is an idiot. Maybe this would speak to someone of a younger generation, but it really didn't do much for me. ( )

I received this book for free through a Goodreads First Reads giveaway.

I wanted to like this book, and based on the cover description I thought it would be a breezy read, the sort of book you bring on vacation or a plane trip. But the main character wasn't all that sympathetic (or believable), and there was way more random drug use and explicit sex (and I'm far from a prude) than I would've guessed from the cover copy. And the story just wasn't that believable at some point. Drug dealers don't just go away. Billy Idol doesn't just randomly hook up with teenage girls who are the daughters of musicians he's on tour with, then give those girls his manager's beeper number.

I feel like this book could have been a lot better with a better editor and someone who could have given this story some clear direction AND a more believable plot trajectory. But in the end, I just didn't buy any of it. ( )

I wanted to like this book. I really did, but I only got 80 pages in before I had to stop. I cannot connect with Allie at all. For someone who is supposed to be a straight A student and always lives on the straight and narrow, she is incredibly stupid and naive and hasty.

I just could not get past how much I disliked Allie. And it's a shame. It seems like it should be an interesting and unique book, but I just can't. ( )