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26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
No longer charming!, April 13, 2006
The brilliance of the first two books in this trilogy was that the reader was responsible for a lot-we were required to "get" Jessica unlike her parents, her peers, and ever her closest friends. And Mccafferty wrote with such precision and wit that Jessica became endeared, a hero, but she never strayed from the perfunctory happenstance of all pubescent life. We "got" Jessica, bought her hook, line, and sinker. The wholeness of Jessica's character-her worrisome, analytical nature juxtaposed to her flaws-made her more real and true than most characters in teen lit books, not merely a compilation of adorable quirks and journals filled with angst over prom dates and zits.
The first books worked because they spent time developing Jessica and made her existence both incredibly cool (She's snarky and likes John Hughes films! She listens to The Smiths! She writes editorials for her school newspaper! She likes nerds!) and incredibly tragic. Though from a rational standpoint, a poem stuffed into one's backpack is not the stuff of Hamlet, Mcafferty made it true anguish. We were so wrapped up in the endearing Jessica and so confused about Marcus Flutie's intentions that it was-- perhaps the sign of a truly genuine story-- as if the events were unfolding in our own lives. The lip-nip was ours, likewise the heartache of Len Levy. The annoyingness of the Clueless Crew. We felt it all, and wanted to scrawl, "Life sucks and then your die," on our book covers, too.
I waited with baited breath for the final installment in the Jessica Darling Epic, and trudged through the pages with alarm. J. (a laughable collegiate moniker) is now a woman. And not the woman I wanted her to be. Somewhere along the way she picked up the habit of leaving huge chunks of time out of her journals and letters- instead reporting sexual trysts and ridiculous scenarios (her parents bang-a-langin' in the living room upon her visit home, to her utter horror) whenever she felt the urge. There is nothing cohesive about the book. J's new personality is both uncharming and totally annoying. The sweetness and sincerity are gone now, and what's left is the making of an OC archetype. Worse still, of course, the writing grew from unrelentingly realistic to slapstick one-dimensional. Why even include the Clueless Two and Co. if there has been no change at all? As a reader, I'm offended that the writer who once expected me to understand, to "get", the complicated psyche of her heroine now paints a story so clumsily and manically. Subplots come and go, characters apparently fall of the face of the earth, only to reappear chapters later in some offhand parenthesized comment.
There is simply, absolutely, unequivocally, nothing charming about this latest attempt at a novel. Save yourselves.
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24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
What was Charming in a High Schooler is Rather Annoying in A College Student, July 6, 2006
Jessica Darling is in college at Columbia in Megan Mccafferty's third installment of this series. And suprisingly, the same angsty, existential characteristics that made her such a great character in the first two books, make her nearly unbearable in Charmed Thirds.
The book is told in a series of letters, emails and mostly diary entries as Jessica deals with summers at home with her parents, with college friends, a long-distance love affair that is on but mostly off, internships and bad jobs.
The problem is, she's not a very nice person, and she's hardly interesting enough to sustain the novel. It's interesting to see this young woman, who had been the most honest and cool of her high school crowd, morph into a petulant, judgmental and unreliable young adult. Her warts-and-all honesty was endearing in high school, but by college you just want her to grow up a little bit and get some perspective.
It's interesting how the formula worked before, but now it falls flat. As a teen-ager, pointing out the bad clothing choices and faux-ironic tee-shirt messages, that seemed kind of wry and amusing. But in a college-age student, it seems snooty and shallow.
The book is well-written, and an interesting slice of contemporary college life.
It's a shame that Jessica hasn't aged gracefully enough to make her someone whose journals are worth a peek.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not as good as the first two, May 20, 2006
Like pretty much everyone else reading this book, I read Megan McCafferty's first two books, so I can only contrast them. In this one, it seemed at times like the author was trying too hard. The descriptions of some of the college boys, like the "bright-eyed death cab cuties" or being "dashbored" by them, literally made me roll my eyes. Even though I get the references, maybe I'm too old (I'm certainly outside the demographic) because it just seemed cheesy.
What happened to the Republican guy (no spoilers) seemed like it was supposed to move me, but it didn't; I was just left wondering why it was so significant. Also, I didn't like Marcus in this one, and the internship at True magazine also seemed like it could've been written to be more amusing. I did like the focus on Jessica's sister, though.
In short, some of the good aspects of the first two books were still here, but it felt like this story was slapped together quickly and too much happened. Whatever magic there was between Jessica and Marcus seems to be gone.
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