Sarah McCarry

About a Girl is the third book in Sarah McCarry's Metamorphoses series, telling of a third generation. The first book, All Our Pretty Songs, tells the stories of Aurora and her nameless best friend. The second book, Dirty Wings, tells the stories of Cassie and Maia, the mother sof Aurora and her friend. This book tells the story of Tally, Aurora's daughter.

Tally has never met her mother, who left her as a newborn. She was raised by her mother's nameless best friend, whom she calls Aunt show more Beast, and her aunt's best friend Raoul and his husband Henri. No matter how their family was formed, it was one of love. They have fostered her super intelligence and supported her and between them and her best friend Shane, Tally has never needed anyone else. But a chance (or is it chance?!) look at a photo of her mother and a once famous musician named Jake sets her on a quest to find answers.

Fresh from heart ache because of seemingly unrequited feelings for Shane, her search takes her to the west coast to a town where strange things seem to happen. Finding answers is harder than she thought as she forgets why she is there and is drawn deeper and deeper into the weirdness that is this reclusive town.

I love these books, despite their very unusual lyrical styles. The first book was dark and disturbing, and written in a lyrical prose that seemed as if it came from an altered state of mind... totally appropriate for the themes of drugs and alcohol that were such a part of the story. It sucks you into the madness, losing sense of time and place, and then brings you back to reality. The second book rides the edge of sanity and danger, taking the reader back and forth with the lyrical writing. This last book is a foray into obsession and desire, the lyrical prose rich with description and emotion.

There are threads of mythology throughout these books, with references to various characters of the Greek stories. While the threads are there, the stories do't conform to the exact tales, but imagine those characters in today's world, the aftermath of the stories we all know.

My Recommendation: This is a book, and a series, that requires an appreciation for the dark and the disturbing and a unique way of telling a story. The prose is beautiful in its own way, even as it takes you down a path that, on the surface, makes no sense. It is necessary to give yourself over to it and to see it for what it is... a descent into a madness that can overtake us all. show less

It's kind of like a modern day story of two codependent best friends and the musician who enters their lives, flavored with echoes of Weetzie Bat, RPF about Frances Bean Cobain, and the Sandman. I loved the prose, the love triangle (and lbr, I typically roll my eyes at those), and the way the story handles itself as a retelling of the myth of Orpheus. There are so many things this book did so well, and I can't wait to read more by this author.

Smart, snide and poignant, this is the story of a lonely young woman in the big city. She sees successful, glossy people all around her, while she's a failed would-be writer making ends meet at a literary agency. Over a cocktail or three every evening, she proofreads the next batch of manuscripts from the agency's star author, writer of a teen paranormal romance series. She is helped in this by her only friend, who happens to be a vampire, and who is deeply unimpressed by his fictional show more counterparts ('The vampire is suspicious of vampires with arcane tattoos, bare pectorals, magical powers, secrets; vampires who eat deer instead of girls. Vampires who are looking for love'). There are plenty of full-blooded jibes here at Twilight and its bandwagon full of imitators, but it's also a surprisingly affecting story of the rootlessness and isolation of city living today. show less

Beautifully written with poetic visuals, I would find myself getting lost in her descriptions of places, music, life. The lives of these two girls are so intertwined that at times I couldn't figure out if their relationship was sisterly, or like lovers. The narrator is the more stable of the two girls and Aurora is so ethereal she almost doesn't seem real. Gorgeous and reckless Aurora often gets herself into difficult situations that the narrator saves her from and every now and then show more Aurora's madness filters over onto the narrator.

Aurora and the narrator's mothers are best friends - one is stable the other not so much, much like their children. The narrator's mother claims to be a witch and is very worried about her daughter and her friend. She thinks there is evil lurking around and wants to try to protect them. As Aurora and Jack become entrenched with a man named Minos, they may end up on a path that our narrator cannot travel. As much as she loves them both, the narrator isn't sure if she can save them or if they even want to be saved.

This book is both beautiful and dangerous. The supernatural elements of the book are woven throughout making you unsure whether it is really happening or if it is in the narrators imagination.
I found it interesting that you never learn the name of the narrator. We follow her, love with her, and are scared with her but we never learn her name, making her an enigma. I loved that she was mysterious, yet I felt like I knew her.

I don't think I have ever read a book like this before and I'm glad I found this one. I can't wait to read the next two books of this trilogy and hope that they are just as poetic and mysterious as this one. show less