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A Reading Vocation

"I Must Read, Read, and Read. It is my Vocation." - Thomas Merton

This is where I chronicle my reading life.  I also blog about writing at Lacey's Late-night Editing.

 

SPOILER ALERT!

Book 78/100: TTFN by Lauren Myracle

ttfn - Lauren Myracle

I read the first book in this series about 7 years ago, then came back and read the remaining 3 in one month. (Something I hardly *ever* do with series, but I figured these were short and light and I might as well just burn through them).

This was my least favorite entry out of all of them, and that may be primarily because so much time passed between the first one and this one that I sort of had to start over. But I found the limitations of the IM format annoying me a little bit in this one -- there were times when I didn't really "trust" what one of the characters was saying, and I wanted to find a way to see if that was how she REALLY felt -- but there was no opportunity for that, no forum in which I could "trust" a character to be 100 percent honest (i.e., a journal, her own thoughts), so one has to just accept the limitations of this particular format, I guess.

I also thought the storyline with Angela's move was kind of disappointing. [I mean, in a novel where the whole story unfolds via IM, why is it so necessary that they all be physically together? In some ways, I think having one of them be far apart actually enhances the story because the girls have to convey more via IM, so the reader gets more information that way, too. And I thought the subplot with her "running away" and then going to live with her aunt was sort of unrealistic -- most parents would probably punish, not reward, her for that behavior. It seems like the move was a subplot Lauren Myracle wanted to run with, then she bailed on it.]

And I felt a little bit like she didn't differentiate the three girls enough in this installment -- like, they had clearly different personalities, but no clear IM'ing "quirks" like misspelled words, or one who always used proper capitalization, etc. They pretty much all wrote in the same text speech (using substitutes like u, ur, etc.), whereas in real communications it seems like there's a lot of variance as far as how much "proper" grammar people use while IM'ing. Zoe in particular seems like she would have not used as much "text speak," but whatevs. It was still a light, breezy read with likable and believable teenage characters.