Megan McCafferty
I enjoyed Charmed Thirds a lot more than the preceding two books, but Jessica Darling still amazes me with her ability to grow down instead of up. She is annoying as ever, and now has new things to obsess about, oh boy! The writing, as usual, is what keeps me reading, although now there was the added intrigue of a YA book set in college. I wish there were more of those, it's nice to know that someone out there caters to the college crowd. Unfortunately, with college come more grown-up situations that Jessica finds herself in, and to be quite frank, hearing her talk about that stuff is pretty darn gross. The girl just has a disgustingly perverted mind! She is still insufferably angsty about the dumbest, most shallow things, but I guess she's got it all made, so what else is she going to complain about, right? Such a spoiled main character! Anyways, I've always loved McCafferty's ability to write such long books but make them so fast paced, but I think she got a little carried away. This one skips a lot of important things, things I would have liked to read about, and the pacing goes from fast to supersonic, no good. I think it really was a mistake to skip through college so quickly, in just one book. Jessica mentions all these college people and experiences and it's a huge shame that we don't get to learn more about them, particularly as they sounded a heck of a lot more interesting than Jessica herself. I did find myself pleading, for the majority of the book, that this was finally the end of Marcus Flutie, begging that Megan McCafferty would take the path Meg Cabot neglected to take, letting Jessica realize that having a boyfriend is not the most important thing in the world. Sigh. I suppose she does still have two books to get rid of him. I am however, glad there's hope...or Hope, I guess I should say. The character with the least page-time is probably the one I am most interested in. Another thing I was pleased about was the inclusion of a bipolar character. Kudos, McCafferty, for showing that anyone can be bipolar, and that it's not necessarily an obvious thing. I find myself wondering what on earth could be left in Jessica Darling's never-ending whine fest, but I guess I'll keep reading to find out.
Rating: 3.75/5
This was the last book I read in this series. I tried to read 4 and 5 but I couldn't make it through since I wanted to reach in a slap Jessica around a lot. She goes from teenage angsty to adult annoying in my opinion. Although the end of the 4th (I skipped to the end) is fairly surprising as is the premise of the 5th.
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