The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls by Julie Schumacher

Release Date: May 8, 2012

I'm Adrienne Haus, survivor of a mother-daughter book club. Most of us didn't want to join. My mother signed me up because I was stuck at home all summer, with my knee in a brace. CeeCee's parents forced her to join after cancelling her Paris trip because she bashed up their car. The members of "The Unbearable Book Club," CeeCee, Jill, Wallis, and I, were all going into eleventh grade A.P. English. But we weren't friends. We were literary prisoners, sweating, reading classics, and hanging out at the pool. If you want to find out how membership in a book club can end up with a person being dead, you can probably look us up under mother-daughter literary catastrophe. Or open this book and read my essay, which I'll turn in when I go back to school.

When I first started reading this, I thought, What a fun idea! A book in the form of a school essay? Neat!

No. 

NOT NEAT. 

Obviously I forgot how boring and poorly written the majority of high school essays are, and this one was no exception. First off, I read this entire book as though they were fifteen-year-olds (which I swear it says in the book). Apparently this is not the case, as the book description says that the girls are all going into ELEVENTH grade A.P. English. Which leads me to believe that: 1) the author has low expectations for her characters and/or missed the lesson on character development, or 2) the girls depicted in this book are just plain stupid. Really, the most likely conclusion is it's a bit of both. 

Second, I can't think of a single redeeming quality in any of the girls. Or their mothers for that matter. Books really didn't get discussed in their "book club"-all the girls locked themselves in the bathroom and talked about anything but books.

Third, Adrienne's mother had to be the worst literary parent I've read about in a long time (and that list includes crazy parents, absent parents, "checked-out" parents, etc, so she must have been REALLY bad to top my list.) I am a firm believer in the "parent first, friend second (or third or fourth...)" philosophy, and obviously Adrienne's mother was not. It seemed like she was overly lax in her parenting because she was so worried about "ruining their mother-daughter friendship." I'm just saying, if it were me, I'd say "Screw that" and lock her in a closet until she came to her senses and/or went back to school. Thank heavens I have sons and not daughters! :)

Anyway, I think they pretty much hit the nail on the head naming this one-- it was, in a word, unbearable. Don't waste your time! 

Happy Reading!

*I received this egalley from the publisher for the purpose of review.