" A girl becomes a comma like that, with wrong boy after wrong boy, she becomes a pause, something quick before the real thing." Its so true. This is a story about the struggles that women go through everyday, but Lisa Glatt found a way to make it funny. It's serious and hilarious at the same time. I bought this book because the title intrigued me and it didn't hurt that it was on the bargain shelf for $2. Its been years since I read it and it still stays in my top 3 favorite books. I think every woman should read it just once. ( )

This is a book that shows how vulnerable women are who are in emotional pain. Their sexuality is used as a cessation of the pain and an understanding of their places in life. The men they encounter are a means to an achievable end - they are not promiscuous, but trying to find a way to end the pain. Perhaps this is universally true and certainly worth examination. Rachel is a very moving character with the intelligence to know how self-destructive her behavior is and yet she is unable to stop it since it is a fleetiong anesthetic to the pain she endures anticipating her mother's death. Her mother's belief in breast reconstruction is indicative of her strength in the face of adversity. I am impressed by the way these characters are woven into the plot, and I found myself caring about all of them. ( )

This book was a good read. It took me a few days to get through it but I enjoyed it. It is about a woman who has a mother who is dying of breast cancer. It has a lot of side characters who get their own sections of the story but Rachel, the main character was the most interesting. I didn't really think the other characters added too much to the story, especially with Angela, the best friend of Rachel who was a very minor character. But I liked the way this book was written.

I also found this book somewhat hard to follow as the author jumped around between the interconnecting stories. As a book about relationships it did a pretty good job. ( )

Amazing read. I LOVED this book. The only other book I read last year that I loved in the manner I love this one was The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing. I'm really weird about books that are supposedly an accurate potrayal of what it's like to be a female. I find that usually the women are written as characters I just can't relate to. I understand not every woman's life was/is as screwed up as mine is/was, especially with regards to sex and relationships with men, but I always appreciate books that show the side of women that's not all shopping and cute boys and hair and nails. I appreciate the ones that are real, and I definitely think this one was that. But this book is not about sex. It's about something much deeper than that. I think it's more about trying to fill a void.

This book mainly focuses on the stories of 3 women - Ella Bloom, Georgia and Rachel Spark. It's told in a series of short stories. I really liked how in the beginning of this book, you make these snap little judgements about the characters. You think you know them. They could be any average jane you meet out on the street and judge based on what little you see of them or what little or lot they choose to show to you. But as the book progresses, each character is broken down and more and more of who they are and how they got to the places their characters started out at in the beginning of the book is revealed. I think the book did a really good job at dissecting each character in a simple, real and relatable way. I also loved the way each story intertwined. It was interesting how alike these women were and how they entered and exited each other's lives, sometimes on a daily basis, and didn't even know it or realize it. Their stories intertwined beautifully.

The book did depress me though. Only because it reminded me so much of myself. ESPECIALLY as a teenager. Overall, amazing read. I subtracted a star though because of the time jumps. The book is broken up into short stories about 3 different women, but each woman's story intertwines with the rest AND the book moves backwards in time which makes things hard to understand at first. It took me a while to get everything sorted out and in the end I understood what the purpose of that was, but it was still confusing. Also towards the end, they never really touched on Ella Bloom's character again and that bugged me. I had really wanted to know what happened with her and her husband. But there really is no closure for any of the characters and you never get to find out what becomes of any of these women which can be bothersome, but I liked that. ( )