I loved reading this, and it made me very enthusiastic to watch the series again (as I was finishing this book Season 3 arrived).

I had a problem with the last essay where the author compares the pain she felt upon her first break-up with the pain Veronica felt after being raped. I work at a sexual assault hotline, and even if I didn't, I can tell you that NO break-up, no matter how devastating is as bad as being raped. There is absolutely no comparison and the author is very deluded to think that the pain from one even comes close to the pain from another.

That statement is just callous and cruel to all those who are recovering from sexual assault. It completely trivializes the pain that one who has been assaulted deals with. I am very, very angry about this. ( )

Rob Thomas, creator of TV’s Veronica Mars and editor of this collection of essays about the show, calls it “a must-read” for fans of the series. It certainly is, but let’s also be clear from the outset – if you’ve never seen the show, you will have no interest in this book. If you’ve seen some, but not all, of the show, wait until you watch the whole thing before reading this book and having major (and minor) spoilers revealed.

For fans of the show (especially ones like me who have watched it repeatedly), this book is so deliciously good. It opens with the humorous (to me anyway) essay that rates the main characters and (major) minor characters on their percentage of camp vs. noir. Despite loving the show, I do have to admit that some things in it are a bit ridiculous, particularly when you pull them out of context and this essay helped to point that out.

After this initial one, the essays become more serious and provide some food for thought about underlying themes and symbolism. Multiple essayists mentioned the overt symbolism of Abel Koontz and Jake Kane having names similar to the biblical Cain and Abel, and I have to admit that never even occurred to me, even though it did become ridiculously obvious once it was pointed out. Another essayist wrote about domesticity in the season one finale, noting that the episode being named “Leave It to Beaver” was a play on that television show and how Neptune families were far from picture-perfect TV. Again this has never occurred to me earlier; I had just taken the episode’s title literally because Beaver’s information helped to crack the case of Lilly’s murder.

Other interesting insights come directly from Rob Thomas himself, who writes short prefaces to each essay. Amongst other things, he writes about how the story grew and developed. For instance, he notes that he never intended for Logan to become a love interest for Veronica but the chemistry between the characters and the actors ended up pushing the plot in that direction. Thomas also describes technical details and why some things must be filmed a certain way. For example, he explains that Backup, the Mars' dog, hardly ever shows up in any scene other than when it's required because having a dog and a dog trainer on the set is incredibly costly. He also points out that he knows dorm rooms aren't usually that large, but the size of the filming equipment requires the rooms to be large unless the director chooses only to have one angle for an entire scene (or series of scenes if the show takes place at a college, as the third season of Veronica Mars does).

Personally, I found the formatting of the book a bit odd because these tidbits from Thomas would have made more sense after reading the essay in question and getting the context of the information he shares. Likewise, the essays all end with a brief biography of the author, and I honestly think the opposite would have made more sense. Given the wide variety of backgrounds the essayists possess (novelists, screenwriters, TV critics, psychologists, etc.), it would probably be good to understand a bit of their background and where they are coming from before launching into their essays. However, these are minor complaints, and obviously, if you so chose, you could easily flip to the end of an essay and read the bio first before reading through the full essay and then flip back to the beginning and read Thomas's comments afterwards.

As the third season was only part-way through when this book was published, many of the essays just address the first two seasons or touch very briefly on season three while focusing mainly on the other seasons. This also means there's no opportunity to discuss the very end of the series, including its depressing final scene (as Rob Thomas and others say on the DVD extras) or how it might have gone on had the show continued for at least another season. On the flip side, it also means that we're not subject to a lot of whining about how the show is no longer on. Don't get me wrong, I'm sad the show ended prematurely, but I think 20 essays all saying that would become annoying after a while.

Out of the roughly 20 essays, there were only two I did not enjoy. "The Duck and the Detective" took the mentions of Veronica Mars in the conservative political cartoon strip Mallard Fillmore as a starting point to examine what elements of the show would appeal to conservatives. I honestly didn't have much interest in the topic of this essay but I also felt like the author didn't necessarily convince me of his arguments either. In “The Importance of Not Being Earnest,” Heather Havrilesky flippantly refers to disillusionment as a puerile high school attitude and then goes on to -- and I'm not joking here -- compare her being dumped by her boyfriend of three months in high school to Veronica being raped at party, abandoned by her mother, and having her best friend murdered. The whole essay actually read like the ramblings of someone still stuck in a high school mentality, despite her protestations that the only people who remain disillusioned as adults are the ones who haven't grown up and are forced to "wear lint-covered Cosby sweaters, eat at the same really bad diner three nights a week, and proselytize about how pets are better than spouses." It ended an otherwise fabulous book with a sour taste in my mouth.

Otherwise, my feelings about the book were that I wish there was more of it so I could continue to examine and re-examine Veronica Mars. ( )

Not as good as I had hoped, but, well, it's Veronica, so i'll read anything. I miss Veronica. ( )