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28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What a great book!, July 11, 2005
This book was so great. It dealt with the girls growing up a little and realizing what each of them has inside plus the support of each other and family, they can make it in the world.
They all are sad because they know at the end of this summer they will have to separate and make a way for themselves in the world, but are hoping to still stay close. Wish it was this way but for many of us, we know that life gets busy and friends grow apart.
This book however the girls lean on each other a bit, but are a bit more independent. They learn to rely on themselves a bit more. Like Lena, who wants to go to art college but her dad forbids it. He won't pay for her to, so now she must work to get a scholarship. Carmen must deal with her mom and David having a new baby, just as she is ready to leave for college. Tibby must deal with her siblings and what she really feels about Brian. Bee is coaching a soccer camp and must deal with the past.
It all went so fast you won't want to go to sleep until you read the last page. I do hope there is another book, but this one was the best!
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Recommendation, By: Julie Shives Ü, December 11, 2005
A Kid's Review
Having recently read The Third Summer of the Sisterhood, I highly recommend this and the three before it. Actually, I mostly recommend this and the other books to mature girls because of it being about teenage girls who demonstrate how real teenage girls act. As a matter of fact, whenever one of my friends asks me what books they should read I always first mention this series. If they say they have already read it, we end up getting of topic and start talking about how great the book is.
One of the reasons why this book is so great is because of it being so real, but yet it still has the romance and fun that every girl dreams of. For instance, when one of the girls mother is getting remarried, then having to deal with that would be like a real life situation. Or, since one of the girls gets to hang out with her biggest crush the whole summer, then she gets to experience some true romance. So, although the book shows wishes coming true, it also demonstrates that not everyone and their actions are perfect.
All in all, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series are the best books that I have ever read. I'm hoping that Ann Brashares will write a fourth book, but I having a feeling that the third one will be the last.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Sisterhood starts to grow up and also to grow apart in the third summer, November 26, 2005
I think the reason that Ann Brashares planned on writing only four books about the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is because there the group's roster consists of four girls. Each girl writes the introduction and the conclusion to a book in first person, but each novel is told by Brashares in third person. Tibby has the honors for "Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood," which I expected because I had a strong hunch that Bee would have the honors for the fourth and presumably final novel. I had a working hypothesis that the girl who writes the introduction undergoes the most major of the crises that afflict the sisterhood in that particular novel, but that might be forcing the issue in this one.
The third summer of the Sisterhood is the last one before college, although only Lena has any academic concerns. Lena was planning on going to art school but when her father discovers that his daughter's art lessons involve sketching nude males he pulls her college funding. This certainly gives the lovely Lena something else to think about besides Kostos. After the death of Bapi, Lena's grandmother Valia has come to live with the family in America and Carmen ends up watching the cranky old lady for her summer job. In taking Valia to the hospital Carmen meets Win (short for Winthrop). She likes Win and he appears to like her, but that is only because he keeps meeting the Good Carmen and does not know what she is really like.
The lives of the girls who stay in town this final summer before college continue to chain out in interesting ways. Carmen, who had to deal with her mother falling in love again in the previous book now has to deal with the shocking news that Christina is pregnant. But when the baby arrives early it is Tibby who is pressed into service as the birth coach. Otherwise Tibby has been dealing with having the clouds lifted from her eyes and noticing that Brian has become a lot more than the geeky guy who plays video games. Meanwhile, off at soccer camp in Pennsylvania where she is working as a coach, Bee discovers that one of the other coaches is Eric, the boy she seduced in the first novel. Obviously, things will be interesting for all four of the girls.
By this third novel I am well aware that the Traveling Pants do not really play a major role in what happens, and this time I would be hard pressed to say they play even a minor role. What is happening instead is that as the girls grow up they are clearly growing apart. In terms of both their contact and their correspondence there is far less in this volume than in the previous ones. Part of this has to do with the fact that they are all home for this summer, or only a state away, but also because each girl has their own overriding concern. For three of the girls that turns out to be a boy and I like that in two of the cases it is a familiar face (I am a big proponent of falling in love with friends rather than strangers). Maybe because Lena's attempt to achieve a breakthrough as an artist is a decidedly different storyline it stands out for me, although it could also be because I have always wanted to be a real artist too.
What I liked most about Brashares' first two novels in the series was the way the Sisterhood supported each other as friends. I especially liked the way that they show up when they need to and say what needs to be said, even when one of them wants to be left alone or does not want to hear what has to be said. So when Tibby, Carmen, Lena and Bee go it alone so much in "Girls in Pants" it was rather diappointing to me. I understand that they are growing up, but it is the growing apart (or what I perceive to be their growing apart) that bothers me. Then again, I am not now nor have I ever been a teenage girl, so it is entirely possibly that this is a totally appropriate and important progression. I could also be at a disadvantage because I have read all three books in about a month and there is something to be said for reading one each year and allowing yourself to grow up a bit more in the interim each year. So I should be in the right frame of mind to read the fourth (and hopefully not final book) when it comes out.
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