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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not horrible, but not what I hoped for, September 1, 2007
Like most reviewers, I am a passionate fan of the Jessica Darling books. I loved the first book and adored the second book even more. I was unhappy with Charmed Thirds, and I went into this book expecting to be disappointed and unhappy with the ending. Maybe that's why in the beginning of the book I was annoyed with the actual writing style. I eventually got over that and did find some parts to enjoy. I liked that Jessica spent time with her parents and had a nice talk with her father. Learning about her parents' early relationship gave some insight into why her mother is the way she is. The part where Jessica describes her sister and her sister's friends' lives as MILFs who want OTB (only the best) for their children was good. But I found myself wishing something would actually happen with or to Jessica. Since the whole book covers only one week's time, I suppose that was an unrealistic hope. Only when Jessica learned the secret about her best friend Hope and Marcus's hidden past did I feel a little bit of the old magic coming back.
Maybe I'm shallow, but a big part of what I loved about the first two books was Marcus, and the latest two books don't include him much. Jessica thinks about him constantly and addresses him in her letter/journal, but he's not there to answer back. We aren't treated to the banter between the two of them that was so great in the beginning. Not that he's talked much lately anyway. He's turned into this practically mute, non-Buddhist, preachy type who I would probably find annoying to be around.
My favorite parts of this book were where Jessica referenced something from the high school years, and that's not a good thing. I could just re-read the first two books if that's what I wanted. I haven't found much to love in the latest two books. I do still admire the writing and I think McCafferty has been consistent in the way she writes Jessica. But for me, it just doesn't work without Marcus. I suppose it is Megan McCafferty's vision to tell Jessica's story and not a sappy romance novel. Like real life, maybe Jessica doesn't live happily ever after with her high school boyfriend. But we're led to believe that Jessica and Marcus have a one-in-a-million kind of connection, and I think that could and should last forever. I hear McCafferty's writing a fifth and final installment in the series. I just hope she gives the fans what they long for, a happily-ever-after ending for the couple we love.
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Still Darling, August 8, 2007
This is the fourth (and imo, quite highly anticipated) book in the Jessica Darling series as it were known...home to some of the best books of teen angst and college angst alike, Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings, Charmed Thirds, and now, Fourth Comings.
These books come out a couple of years apart it seems - in part so McCafferty can make them VERY now...they are written attached to an actual date and time, with quite current language and pop culture references. If you've read the books before you'll know that they are written in diary format, with Jessica Darling, our cynical yet lovable heroine, ranting and jibing about the masses, and at times, even those close to her.
This brings us to the first big difference in this book - although it is in journal format, it spans two notebooks, that are written specifically to Marcus Flutie, Jessica's long-time on-again off-again love object. As Jessica points out by the end of the book, writing a journal to Marcus is far different than writing a journal for herself - she feels like she is acting out a role for Marcus rather than just being herself in writing the notebooks, and it shows most prominently in Jessica's continued reflections on events surrounding Marcus, or events he may not have been present for (which she wouldn't have needed to do had the journals been just for her).
A second big difference between this book and the past ones is the fact it does not span a year or two as the first 3 did (the third was Jessica's entire college life) but a simple, but action-packed week. That's not entirely fair though, as many of the conversations and thoughts Jessica has are flashbacks of conversations, moments, and memories that occured several weeks before where the story picks up, and in some cases, quite far back in Jessica's memory.
The plot is basically as follows...when we last saw Jessica, her and Marcus reunited just in time for Jessica to take off on a month-long cross-country road trip with her best friend, Hope. When the trip is derailed, Jessica returns to New York City to figure out the 'what next'. The book picks up six months after this point, and fills in the gaps along the way as to where Jessica is living and how she is trying to scrape a living and pay her student loans. The book opens with Jessica pondering the demise of her relationship with Marcus, to which he blindsides her with a marriage proposal and a week to think it over while he's out of town.
The rest of the book has Jessica meeting up with all sorts of familiar faces from her family members to her high school classmates to her college pals to some new faces as well...one of the most interesting aspects of the book is the fact Hope, Jessica's best friend, is now a real figure in Jessica's life again, so we get to see their relationship in action instead of in Jessica's lamenting and memories. Basically the book tries to answer that pending question...What now? in every aspect of Jessica's life from her role in her family to her career prospects to most importantly, this crazy marriage proposal from Marcus.
Overall I felt a tiny bit cheated that the book was just one week long...but within the context of the plot any longer and you would have been aggravated. As it is, McCafferty manages to stretch out Jessica's 7-day streak into a 300 page book. Despite my slight disappointment in the length of the plot's timeline, the story itself is beautifully written...the advantage McCafferty has by writing her story in diary format is that as Jessica's writing gets better and more mature, it probably reflects the leaps and bounds McCafferty's writing has taken as well. There is something more interesting, more reflective, and more relatable about Jessica this time around, a voice that realizes her cynicism is both an escape and a hinderence to pushing forward with her life.
I'm glad I bought this book...if only for the way it ended. I think there will be mixed reactions overall, but don't forget, a 5th & final Jessica Darling book is on the way in the next couple of years. A great, mature take on a character I've grown to love and relate to!
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Definitely not her best, August 10, 2007
As a long-time fan of the Jessica Darling series, I can confidently state that this is NOT Mccafferty's best installment so far. Yes, Jessica Darling is more snarky and irreverent as ever, and her uber-cynicism and keen wit leak onto nearly page of her journal. Yes, the writing is still fresh, engaging, and from time to time laugh-out-loud funny, teeming with entertaining satirical tidbits about, well, everything. However, I kind of wish Mccafferty would stop making pop-culture references up the wazoo and bring some more of one of the series' quirkiest, most loveable characters into the forefront--Marcus Flutie. While the journal that Jessica is keeping is supposedly addressed to her infamous Buddhist-lover Marcus Flutie, we really only SEE Marcus Flutie at the book's very beginning and very end--and then only in the briefest of dialogues and an ambiguous letter. As in the third book of the series, Mccafferty seems determined to keep Marcus' charming self hidden far the reach of the reader. The result is that Marcus becomes a shadowy, almost unknoweable character, whose mysterious persona leaves us wondering, "Who IS Marcus Flutie?" (which I realized, after reading the book's final pages, was probably the point).
Besides Marcus Flutie, I felt that I didn't really get to know any of her characters too well this time around--besides Jessica Darling, of course, given that this is her journal. The beautiful Bridget, for instance, barely makes an appearence, and even characters that I thought I would get to know more--like Hope, Jessica's bosom buddy--weren't nearly as three-dimensional as they could have been. Overall, the book is teeming with insanely colorful and at times bizarre characters--a drag queen, an on-again, off-again lesbian, a bipolar drama queen who pretends to be what she isn't--but I don't feel like any were particularly real or easy to connect with. Overall, I think Mccafferty's writing has matured in the sense that she is willing to be a little more ambiguous and leave the reader to do his or her part, too. However, I think this very ambiguity was stretched too thin, and we are left with characters who aren't very likeable simply because we don't really know them. In my opinion, this book is in need of a little more substance, and more than a little Marcus Flutie.
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