In anticipation of Valentine's Day, I cast around for a good Retro Friday book to review. I wanted one with a compelling romantic storyline, but not one that was necessarily primarily focused on the romance. You know me. Then I remembered this beautiful book I read, oh, almost four years ago, and it struck me as the perfect one to highlight today. I never hear very many people talk about it as anything other than a beach read (at best), and I wonder if it just flew under the radar a fair bit or

Alice is an annoying girl who spends the entire book whining about her childhood friend Paul. Does he love me? No he doesn't love me. Wait DOES HE LOVE ME? No I don't think he loves me.Paul is an annoying guy who spends the entire book angsting about Alice. I don't love Alice. I CAN'T love Alice. Wait. I think I DO love Alice. But does she love me? NO, THIS CAN NEVER BE. THIS SHOULD NEVER BE.Then they get together and spend the entire middle of the book having sex in various locations. His bed,

This might be the hardest review for me to write. I hope someone reads it. :)When people ask me what my favorite book is I always say Pride and Prejudice, and that isn’t really the truth anymore. The truth is that The Last Summer (of You and Me) is my favorite. It has been for years. I love Elizabeth Bennet dearly but Alice is where it’s at for me. I want to be her. She’s so kind and gentle and lovely. I love the dynamic between the three of them. I want to run to Fire Island and find my own Pa...

I cannot stop raving about this book. To me, this book is a gem that holds a special place in my heart, because it is very perspective, raw with emotions, and just the right book I've been looking for.I am officially in love with the very mature way Ann Brashares explains her story. The plot, to me, is very simple, the way I like it - nothing overly dramatic, everything falls in place naturally. I love how the author knows each character perfectly - we can't just imagine how they look, but also

Eh. Definitely a light and easy read. I found her writing style somewhat annoying. I feel like she was trying too hard to be philosophical or sound intelligent. She's big on using contrasts. Over and over. She would write things like "She didn't know if he needed more or less of her. Maybe neither. Maybe both. Maybe it's always both." It got tiresome. I also had trouble feeling for the characters. Probably because I thought how they handled the situation was completely not believable and totally...

The Last Summer (of You & Me), by Ann Brashares (the author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series) is an adult novel which tells the story of three friends/siblings: Paul, Riley, and Alice. Each is in their early twenties, and like the generation they belong to, they’re still on the cusp between childhood and adulthood, trying to figure out who they are and their relationships with each other and the rest of the world. Riley is especially immature; at twenty-five she still makes a car

The characters in this book all annoyed the crap out of me. I love you! I hate you! I love you! And hate you! It's a thin line between love and hate, yes. It's also a thin line between me reading this and barfing. They all deserved each other, which was the saving grace of it all.

This is the author's "first adult" book following her string of "Traveling Pants" novels for young adults. It's about three people -- two sisters and their next-door neighbor -- and summers spent living the island life. Riley's the older sister, outdoors-driven to the point where she eshews "normal" relationships and activities with which others her age are consumed; Alice, her amazingly beautiful, selfless and smart younger sister; and Paul, the rich, semi-tortured (as all stereotypical rich ki...

After reading this book, I'm just wondering why didn't I read this before ! It has been really long since a book had obsessed me to the point I can't stop reading it, and I can't stop thinking about it. It's the story of two sisters, Riley and Alice and Riley's best friend, Paul, they have known each other since years. 3 years after their last meeting in their beach house, they're all grown-up and some relationships have changed... But then something terrible happens.I only put 4 stars, because

Is the plot really important in a book? Maybe for some readers it is, I usually expect a great plot from a crime novel but most of the time what really matters to me is the atmosphere, the dialogue, the overall feeling that a book is able to convey in my day.I will soon turn 29 and I haven’t read the sisterhood series by Ann Brashares yet, I recently read The Last summer (of you and me) and I loved it (literally couldn’t put it down).A brief regarding the plot: the book takes place in Fire Islan...

Three solid stars. I wanted to like this book even more, but it was no Sisters of the Traveling Pants series.You'll turn out ordinary if you're not careful.Alice sensed that young children instinctively preferred the life inside a small house to a big one.It was depressing how radically your priorities shifted when you were tired.I was scared of the idea that I could become an entirely different person, a stranger to myself. (wanting a motorcycle when older)

This was a 'nice' book. I liked the characters but didn't fall in love with them. The story was easy to read but provoked no real thinking. A quick summer holiday read.

I'm only halfway through with this but I already have some thoughts:1. If this had come out while I was in high school, I would have LOVED it. You would have seen me clutching it all moony-eyed for days. So when the reviews say that this is for the fans of the traveling pants series who are all grown up now-- no, I don't think so. I think it's for the young ladies who are just getting into the traveling pants. I like to think that I'm still in touch enough with my 16-year-old self that I still l...

Quite a disappointment for me, as I've really enjoyed Brasheare's Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants' series. Or at least the two that I've read. I have a high tolerance for frequently trod tropes if a) I really like the characters (for whatever reason) and 2) the writing is engaging and surprising. Unfortunately, the main characters make me want to hit them over the head with very large bricks - over and over again and I felt that I could see the plot turns coming several chapters ahead of time....

My favorite book ever. This book was my first 'adult' book and I enjoy it now more than ever.

What an unbelievable disappointment. For those who don't know, Ann Brashares wrote the YA series The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which I loved. How is it possible for the YA series to have been so delightful and the Adult novel to be so forced? I found the writing stilted, the character development weak, and my plot expectations unfulfilled. I read 113 pages before accepting the fact that it wasn't going to get any better. I skimmed the last half of the book just to see if anything else a...

What pretentious baloney! Listen to this:His distress and pleasure mixed and married, giving birth to several anxious children. Maybe he shouldn't have come back here. But what else did he have? The trick was to have what he had without destroying it, if that was possible. Could you even do that? Every desire fulfilled was thus defeated. Could you interrupt the cycle? Could you make the world hold still?What does that even mean?! Who talks like that? It wasn't just this one character either, the...

this book is dumb and shallow. i know this book is intended for YA. but this must be the dumbest plot i ever read. i literally have to skip many pages and after 50%, i just wish i can skip this book and put it on forgotten shelf.

Reading a few of my backlist books and this was one of them. I found myself falling asleep while reading this book. So It didn't keep my interest. I grabbed the audio book and the same thing happened. I forced myself through it and I felt like I couldn't connect with any of the characters really care what was going on in their lives. The book ended and I was happy to have finished it. 🤮 wasnt for me.

I have to admit to really loving the traveling pants series, and so I was WICKED excited when a local bookstore had a HUGE sale and I could nab this book at 1/2 price. I sort of horded it for a couple of weeks and waited to read it. The cover was so inviting, I couldn't resist today, the second sunny, warm day of spring here in Asheville. So...I started and finished it in the same 24 hours, if that tells you anything at all about it. I didn't love the beginning, the characters were way too messe...