Okay. I am going to go out on a literary limb here and make a confession.
My name is Jessica, and I have read romance novels. (GASP-all caps for loud gasping)
And for those of you shaking your head and judging me from your high & mighty cultured horse, I have a quick statement. Unless you are an ostrich - and kudos on the whole reading thing if you are - you cannot tell me that you haven't seen such films as
The Notebook, Titanic, Casablanca, (insert classic chick flick of your preferential choice). If you have even merely caught reruns on TV of these while folding laundry, you - my friend - have basically read a romance novel albeit using someone else's imagination. And to that I say
, "J'accuse!" on count of hypocrisy
.
This small confession has nothing to do with my review, other than to tell you, this book is not a romance novel. :) It comes from a genre that I was not acquainted with prior to this novel. The illusive genre of chick lit. (No, this is no vending machine gum.)
It is defined as such:
Chick lit is genre fiction which addresses issues of modern womanhood, often humorously and lightheartedly. The genre became popular in the late 1990s, with chick lit titles topping bestseller lists and the creation of imprints devoted entirely to chick lit. Although it sometimes includes romantic elements, chick lit is generally not considered a direct subcategory of the romance novel genre, because the heroine's relationship with her family or friends is often just as important as her romantic relationships.
Thank you Wikipedia for clearing that up. :)
Now on to my review of Between Boyfriends by Sarka-Jonae Miller.
Jan Weston is about to receive a hard knock that she wasn't expecting. Entitled, selfish, pretentious, and manipulative - Jan finds herself suddenly single, disowned by her family, cut off from her familial line of credit, and a nuisance to her so called friends. What's a girl to do? Can Jan survive getting a job, paying for school, living on oatmeal, wearing last year's fashions all while swearing off men? Between Boyfriends follows Jan through her hard fall to reality and rise to self reliance. Jan takes it all on the chin and keeps on swinging for the fences.
The book is a well written exploratory view into the life and inner machinations of a drama riddled juvenile group of girls. And while the exhibition is spotless, it smacks more of spectacle than of spectacular. I had an excruciating time trying to relate to the main character - hating her pity parties, drunken binges, and temper tantrums. She was sophomoric, and the more that happened to her the less I cared about what else might happen to her.
This feeling of apathy didn't last the entire book. By the end, I was glad that Jan had found her sea legs and was off to start her own adventure. But I don't think that the end completely redeems the story. And here's why: some of her issues, that the author wraps up in tiny little bows of success stories, aren't actually fully addressed. Jan's relationship with her parents is a doozy, and cutting her back into the will - doesn't exactly translate to healthy boundaries or healing.
I felt like too much time was spent in laying out the minutia of Jan's problems (social and otherwise) - that the solutions were mere flashes in the pan to glaze us on to the happy ending with the bowing and the skipping. The book just wasn't the lighthearted look at college angst that I thought it was. When you pull out heavy hitters like emotional neglect and abuse, I expect some concrete resolution.
All in all, I give the book a 3 for standard stock. I truly enjoyed the writing style of the author and would be happy to read future works. :)
