Megan McCafferty

Who needs more teen angst? Certainly not me given that I am living with a teenager and a pre-teen at the moment and at any given day the sky can be falling in on one or both of them. So despite having had this on my shelf for a very long time, I kept putting it off and putting it off. But I have looked at it consistently for more than a year, intending to finally read it. I am so glad I did. Jessica Darling is good fun and this book is delightfully entertaining.

The book opens with Jessica's show more best friend Hope having moved away and the book is presented in journal and letter form as Jess struggles with feeling newly alone. The journal is for those things she can't even tell Hope and the letters to Hope reinforce and illuminate some of the social and personal situations at school. Hope was really her only real friend and she is now marooned with a clique of girls with whom she's grown up but whom she can't really stand. She is frustrated by her friend Scottie's ongoing crush on her and she is mildly tormented by the school's slacker druggie suddenly latching onto her and calling her out for her superficial behaviour. Jess is a straight A student and a very gifted runner but she is moody and angry, lashing out at her parents and erecting a prickly wall that few people are willing to try and break through. When a new girl moves to school, she and Jess start to hit it off but everything is not as it seems.

The first in a series, McCafferty has managed to capture the misperceptions, uncertainties, and insecurities of high school in this book. She has created a smart, likable, bull-headed, and sometimes completely self-absorbed and casually mean narrator in Jess Darling. The wonder of it is that we do still really, really like her despite all her angst, her bouts of hypocritical behaviour, and her occasional obstreperousness. Even though I wouldn't go back to high school myself on a bet, I am looking forward to joining Jess on her further adventures in later books. More than just light good fun, this is a charming coming of age novel that manages to be both true to life and serve as a reminder that high school is rough for everybody, a reinforcement I'll need a mere year from now in dealing with my crew. show less

BLAH. Just Bad.

Jessica hasn't seen or heard from Marcus in years. Not since she gave him the notebooks explaining why she didn't want to marry him. That's all about to change when she literally runs into him at the airport. After missing her flight and learning that it will be hours before she can get another flight, she ends up sitting down with Marcus and hashing out/catching up on what's happened in their lives.

For the first time we get to hear from Marcus's POV... and find out once and show more for all what the future holds for this couple.


My Thoughts:
I should've known, I should've known, I Should Have Known!! After the 4th book pissed me off so bad (even though I took an entire year to cool off from it), I should have known better than to read this book. It's just I SO wanted to like it. I freaking loved the first 2 books in the series, and then... book 3 was okay, but borderline annoying, and book 4 left me wanting to punch JD in the face. Now we have this super weird 3rd person dialogue between Jessica Darling and Marcus Flutie that really was just so pretentious and barf inducing that I had to FORCE myself to finish the book.

Marcus in this book = sex on a stick. And it's annoying. I get it, the author thinks Marcus is hot. So do a lot of other people. But is he like Ryan Gosling or something?? I was waiting for girls to start throwing panties at him as he was walking through the airport or hotel.... I really was. Case in point: Jessica hasn't seen him in 3 years, but feels the need to immediately lie and say she has her period so that he (and she) knows that no sex can happen. Ummm you are in an airport waiting for a plane to take you a thousand miles away and haven't said 3 words to him yet. Why do you automatically assume he's even interested??

The format of the book- It's basically just one long drawn out convo where it's hard to even get at who is talking. There is no he said... she said. And they both talk like they're trying too hard to be smart, so at times I got lost. But eventually I could always count on Jessica doing her usual judgy-mcjudgey, trying too hard to be funny and mean, "banter" to clue me in on who was who. She literally says that when Marcus and her talk it's always a battle of wits. What's wrong with actually CARING what a person has been up to and GENUINELY wanting to hear it instead of looking to one-up and outsmart them?? I don't get it.

I feel so bad because in [b:Sloppy Firsts|138202|Sloppy Firsts (Jessica Darling, #1)|Megan McCafferty|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320531275s/138202.jpg|2975988], I felt like the author was writing that book just for me. I know that sounds silly, but I felt so connected with that book. Like it was EXACTLY the type of book I had been wishing for and there is was. I guess I just wanted Jessica to evolve and change a little as she grew up... and she never ever did. In the end I really really didn't WANT Marcus to want Jessica anymore. And that surprised me because I always liked those 2 together. Jessica is just is not capable of the feelings that I feel Marcus could get from someone else. I think he'd be happier with someone more human.

The whole time they were talking the convo felt awkward. And I think partly that's because Jessica does not "get" Marcus at all. She sees him as an ex-junkie, ex-manwhore, Buddhist, hippie, enigma. She wants to label him. She could care less about the person he has become. Can't he do any better than that??

I didn't think this book could possibly piss me off worst than the 4th one did, but that ENTIRE chapter of Haiku's or whatever weird poetry they were writing was, ensured I was even more so. This book EASILY could and should have been a Novella. An 80 page Novella. Just let me know what's happened to all my favorite characters, figure out what's next for the Jessica/Marcus relationship and get the F out. No need for 258 pages... no need at all. Now am I supposed to be excited to read the prequel series??... cause I gotta tell you I'm not.

Maybe I'm just not getting this book. Maybe I'm not smart enough or I don't watch enough "artsy" movies or read enough philosophy or something. Maybe if I understood what exactly this book was trying to accomplish I would appreciate it more??? I don't know, I'm grasping here....

OVERALL: If you want to read this series, I totally recommend books 1 & 2. The rest of the series... not so much. And this final hot mess... JUST NO!!! Do yourself a favor and skip it!!

My Blog:
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What most fascinates me about these books is that even though this is satire, the situations are all very plausible. If you’re not familiar with the series, teens are used to reproduce for adults — adults who become infertile in their 20′s. Teens are auctioned in a way, with the hotter, sexier teens scoring the bigger contracts to “bump” and produce a child for a waiting couple. Not only does it illustrate the obsession America has with being “hot” and placing more worth on the show more more attractive people in the world, but this particular installment also touches on the obsession we have with celebrities and reality TV as the twins garner national attention for their “Double Double Due Date”. (The twins, Melody & Harmony are both set to deliver twins on the same day.)

In an age where tons of people tune in weekly to keep up with the Kardashians, or obsess over the Real Housewives of whatever, not to mention Sixteen & Pregnant, it’s easy to see where many, if not all, of the events in this series could plausibly play out in today’s world. What a lot of people fail to realize is that the people on these reality shows are, in all actuality, living, breathing human beings, but they eventually become nothing less than characters in our mind — ones placed there specifically for our entertainment. The fact that they have the right to their own decisions and their own lives becomes irrelevant to us as a society because we feel as if they are obligated to entertain us — to give us the outcome WE want. While it’s true they do make the choice to be on television, and more often than not you know there’s a lot of forced drama, but that drama is there because that is what people want. Personally, it exhausts me.

My point in all of this is that Melody and Harmony (as well as a lot of the other teens in the series) have become just that — products. They are expected to do their duty to “serve the world” in some way. There are so many parallels to today’s society that I can’t name them all without getting political (and I don’t ever want to do that here).

I liked this book more than the first as it delves deeper into the characters. While, as far as I know, there’s no plan for a third book, I am curious as to what happens to the girls after this book. It does end with a sense of hope, which I liked, but I’d still like to see more.

If you read Bumped (and you HAVE to before reading this installment or you will have no idea what is going on) I highly suggest you read Thumped. While the first book focused more on the world Harmony and Melody live in, this one focuses a lot more on the characters and what this world has done to them. It’s an engaging read, and if nothing else, it will make you think. show less

We open Megan McCafferty's Second Helpings to discover that in a fit of self-loathing, high school senior Jessica has destroyed the diary which stood as a shrine to her obsession with one Marcus Flutie — the text of Sloppy Firsts. After their non-relationship came to a very abrupt end on New Year’s Eve at the end of the first novel, I wasn’t quite sure where we would find Jess and Marcus at the onset of this installment . . . and we found them nowhere, really. As Jess is away for the show more summer at a creative writing camp and ardently refusing to think and/or talk about Marcus as anyone other than He Who Shall Not Be Mentioned, we run through the summer with Jessica and Call Me Chantelle, Jess’s promiscuous and vapid bunkmate.

Then school starts up again. Jessica is grappling with her classmates taking the SATs, applying to colleges and worrying about AP tests — but she stands apart from all of that, so secure in her own intelligence and abilities that school just seems to be . . . whatever. In any other character, this would really irk me — but we know, as readers, that Jessica isn’t like all the other seniors. So I was willing to accept that fact that we wouldn’t be reading about her studying long hours or panicking about biology tests. She’s the certified Class Braniac, right?

And she’s also the Class Loudmouth — known for her scathing editorials and loud opinions regarding the dense, clueless people with whom she shares a class. When an e-mail begins popping up in the inboxes of Pineville High’s seniors — aptly called Pinevile Low – everyone assumes she’s behind the embarrassing, supposedly secret gossip that’s now become fodder for everyone around her. But she isn’t. Isn’t she?

Add in the fact that Jessica now has her heart set on attending Columbia in New York City – recent site of the 9/11 terrorist attack — and the knowledge that her parents will never, ever want her to attend, especially when she’s been offered scholarships to a bevy of other schools, and Jess is ready to panic.

Oh, yeah. And Marcus Flutie, the semi-reformed (but still nonconformist) bad boy she was thisclose to just flat-out falling into crazed love with is now trying to hook her up with his best friend (and fellow Class Brainiac) Len Levy.

I know, it’s a lot going on. Definitely a lot. But I can tell you that I tore through this book as though I had seconds to live — and I had to make peace with the Marcus-and-Jess situation before it was too late. I was far from disappointed! Megan McCafferty’s books are funny, poignant, realistic and just . . . good. Really, really good.

Run out and get books one and two, and then you’ll be like me — running to Borders at 9:30 p.m. on a Tuesday, sweaty coupon in hand, looking around like a crazed beast for Charmed Thirds, the next installment in this addictive series. show less