Customer Reviews

Bass Ackwards and Belly Up: A Novel

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I started reading this novel on an airplane, read the whole flight, and kept reading at every available moment until I finished it.

Bass Ackwards switches between the stories of four best friends, three of whom decide to postpone their freshman year at college to pursue their dreams. Usually with books like this, with several main characters, you're engaged by some of their stories and bored by others. Here I was equally interested in reading about all four of the main characters.

It's engaging and fun, but it's also well-written. I'd compare it to Ann Brashares's books about the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, but aimed at a slightly older group. College students or adults would like Bass Ackwards as much as teenagers.

Despite their vastly different personalities and families, Harper, Sophie, Becca, and Kate have been best friends for years. No matter what, they tell each other everything.

Well, almost everything. Harper was rejected from NYU, the only college to which she applied, and has been keeping this a secret from her friends and her parents for months. Right before her friends plan to take off for colleges all over the country, the truth comes out.

Well, kind of. Harper acts as though she has decided not to go to NYU, preferring to stay home and write the next Great American Novel. She thinks this quasi-admission will shock her friends, but their reactions shock her even more: two of them decide to follow her example and take a year off from college to chase their own capital-D Dreams.

From there on, the story follows each girl in turn. Each storyline is given equal time and attention, switching back and forth every few pages. This format will be familiar to fans of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

Sophie wants to be a famous actress. As luck would have it, her mom's old friend lives with her husband in Beverly Hills and allows Sophie to stay at the guesthouse rent-free. Sophie's landlords are quite busy and have good connections, giving her total freedom and helping her snag some auditions. Sophie befriends Sam, an aspiring actor who takes care of the pool and does odd jobs around the place, and Trey, a famous actor who gets her a line in a movie and steals her heart. If you like Sophie's storyline, read The 310 series by Beth Killian.

Kate's post-high-school plans were supposed to be set in stone: Go to Harvard with her long-time boyfriend, study hard and get good grades in an effort to live up to her parents' high expectations. Harper's big plan makes Kate realize she has no plan of her own. Europe calls out to her, so she books a plane ticket and packs her bags. As her boyfriend drops her off at the airport, he breaks up with her. She heads off to her big trip feeling more alone than ever. While she travels, she attempts to work her way through a list of 100 tasks ("Touch the Berlin Wall," "Take the water," "Stomp grapes") created by her friends and her younger adopted sister Habiba. If you like Kate's story, read 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson.

Becca heads off to Middlebury as planned, wanting to wow the school's coach with her skiing ability. He coached an Olympic team and she wants to impress him more than anything. She ends up getting on his bad side during the first practice and staying there for quite some time. Not only that, but small pratfalls evolve into bigger disasters, snowballing into something she never could have seen coming. Somewhere along the way, she manages to do the one thing her friends challenged her to do: fall in love. If you like Becca's story, read the Love Bukowski series by Emily Franklin.

Meanwhile, Harper finds herself staring at a blank computer screen. Now living in her parents' basement and told that she must pay rent, she takes a job at a local coffeehouse. An old classmate, Judd, becomes an unlikely friend. The twenty-three-year-old English teacher she crushed on in high school becomes a regular customer - and maybe something more. Now if she could only manage to actually write something . . . If you like Harper's story, read That Summer by Sarah Dessen.

The book covers three months in the lives of four teenage girls. As any teenager can tell you, that is both a very short and a very long period of time. During those three months, the characters are each granted a new kind of independence, but manage to come back together. If only all friendships were truly this strong, and we were all afforded the freedom (and, for the most part, incredibly good luck and easy resolutions) these girls were given.

It is the time for their lives to truly take flight. Best friends Harper, Kate, Becca and Sophie have graduated high school and are going to separate colleges to pursue their separate careers. But to Harper's disappointment, her future is crushed when she received the rejection letter from NYU and rather than tell her friends the truth, she decides to spend the year writing America's next Little Women. Although her gambling journey was not to be taken alone, for Harper inspired both Kate and Sophie to chase their dreams as well. Sophie blindly stumbles into Hollywood in search of the perfect audition that will propel her into the movie business, but instead finds love with the wrong actor. Leaving home with only a passport and an open road, Kate bails out of Harvard to explore the world and its broad opportunity where she hopes her dream is hidden. The only one to stick to her plan, Becca hits the ski slopes on the Middlebury team content with the only thing she feels good at, which keeps her company when her friends are far. Love comes to each girl that year and with it decisions that could change their lives, and though apart, the four friends manage to find ways to hold each other close. Bass Ackwards and Belly Up, by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fein, is a heartfelt novel that defines the love that is intertwined in the friendship of four girls who experience their first steps into the real world.

Bass Ackwards and Belly Up is made up of the four stories of the four friends Becca, Harper, Sophie and Kate. The tales of each of their separate lives makes the book a more intriguing read, one that's difficult to put down. From each girl, the reader can sometimes relate and because there are separate stories, it is easier to compare with.

Thorough the hard times, together or apart, the authors do a great job of defining each character by their experiences. For instance, when Kate is robbed and Harper finishes the first fifty pages of her book, each girl is changed and reacts a different way to the events. The characters are very well developed and it makes the story much easier to imagine.

Bass Ackwards and Belly Up focuses on each friend's dream, whatever that dream may be. In this way, it gives teens the incentive to chase their dreams, but still to think out what this change may hold for their futures. Through this story, the authors send a great message for teens that shows you can accomplish whatever you wish if you just give it a try.

This story of four friends and their adventures as young adults is an incredible story of love, determination and the freedom to make your own choices with the burden of the consequences. I highly recommend Bass Ackwards and Belly Up to teenage girls and young adults for I highly enjoyed it myself.

E. Knipp

Best friends Harper, Sophie, Becca, and Kate have done everything together since elementary school. Now they've graduated, and are about to go off to college. True, they're all going to different schools, in different cities, but they're still all having the same experiences, just in different locations. Then, the night before Becca is supposed to leave for Middlebury, Harper drops a bomb. Instead of heading off to Manhattan, she's going to be staying at home in her parents basement and writing the next Great American Novel. In other words, following her Dream. Sophie and Kate quickly hop on board the "Dream Train," as they call it, going to L.A. and Europe, respectively. For Becca, joining the Middlebury ski team is her dream, but her friends tell her she should work on expanding her horizons by falling in love. As the girls' powerful stories alternate throughout the novel, you will be rooting for all of them to accomplish their dreams. True, there are obstacles: a bitter ski coach, skeezy guys, and writer's block, to name a few. But this Dream Train is full speed ahead, and it doesn't stop for anything or anyone.

This book was cute and fun. I'd refer to it as a slightly more raunchy version of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Sure, it could use a little more character development and it left a few loose ends to be tied but overall it's worth a read. I read it sophomore year of high school which is the perfect age for a novel of this calibre. Reread it as an adult and it definitely wasn't as great as I remembered it but I'd recommend it for a 15-18 year old age range.

This book follows four best friends after they graduate high school. Initially, these girls all planned on going to college, but this changed when one of the girls, Harper, gets rejected from NYU. Instead of admitting to her friends that she got rejected from the only school she applied to, she tells them she is purposefully taking the year off to pursue her dream of writing the next great American novel. This sparks a revolution among her friends, and soon Kate and Sophie don't want to go to college either. Kate, the perfectionist, doesn't have a dream yet, but she plans on finding it as she spendss the year backpacking around Europe. Sophie, ever the dramatic one, goes off to LA to pursue her dreams of being a famous actress. Becca, the only one still going to college, is given a dream of her own to accomplish: she must fall in love. So what if they turn their lives completely upside down? They always have each others backs.

I've heard that people say this is the "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" for older readers, and I agree with that statement to a certain extent. The premise is certainly similar, but this book seemed to lack the spark that made the "Sisterhood" books so wildly popular.

I enjoyed this book. It was a good way to spend time. But I still never felt anything for the characters. They were nicely developed, with faults and strengths, but I lacked an emotional connection.

I would have to say this book is forgettable. While reading it, you don't notice anything lacking, but when you finish and reflect, you realize it wasn't that great. It probably deserves less than 4 stars in retrospect. I might read the sequel though, if I'd happen to come across it.

Bass Ackwards and Belly Up seemed like a rip-off of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. As glad as I was to read another book featuring characters in their older teens, it wasn't as great as I had hoped. It dives right into the middle of a hugely dramatic time in these four teens' lives, and while a bit confusing, eventually everything makes sense. The storylines are interesting enough, but they were pretty simple and very predictable stories for the most part. The characters were made lovable through the writing early on, but since they were all separated, the story wasn't as interesting as it could have been if they were together, much like Sisterhood again. At least with the Sisterhood series, when the girls were apart, they were in regular correspondence and we as readers were witness to that, but here, they were all on their separate adventures, and it was harder to imagine how crazyawesome the story would have been with them all together. Midway, the stories just lose all their push. Something happens, and it all becomes dull. The girls' characterization seems to fall by the wayside, and while they had their moments, the second half of the book was not nearly as enjoyable a read as the first. The one pairing I was interested in had no resolution, and I was very disappointed about that. Many of the stories are left ambiguous, which makes some of them seem utterly pointless and a waste of time to have read. I would just stick with reading the Sisterhood series instead of picking this one up.

Rating: 3/5

I just finished this book, and I have to say I loved it!! The only thing I wish is that we could find out about how Harper and Mr. Finelli (Sorry, ADAM) end up. Other than that, AMAZING!

Wow, I just want to say this book is awesome! I remember buying it at Barnes & Nobles because I thought it looked interesting. It was so good, I just could not put it down! I read it in like two days and I have been waiting for the sequel for months. I'm going to go and pre order it now!

I know it says in the summary that this is for readers of Gossip Girl and A-List, but I swear this book is much better than those. I liked this book so much, because it showed four girls in pursuit of their dreams. I could relate to each of them in different ways, and I felt like the ending was perfect. It wasn't entirely corny and predictable. This is similar to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, except for the fact that we don't have to wait for a second book to come out before we find out what happens.