She knew herself best when she was with them.

If by tear up you mean, my book was all wet and I had to keep looking away from it so my heart wouldn't heave right out of me, then the last time* that happened was:



Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares

JFC this was the worst thing. I mean, it wasn't terribly written or plotted or anything academic like that. It was just like how you think you're going to be watching a fun Disney movie and then Scar kills his brother. Not cool, story-telling. I am shit at reviewing things unless I can make fun of them and even then I feel guilty about being mean so all I can say is I cried a lot. But Ashley (as always) says what I'm thinking except smarter and better:

Until about the last forty pages, I thought I knew what I was going to write in this review. I was going to say that Brashares is incredibly good with the inner lives of her characters. I was going to say that she brings people to life in magical, absurdly readable, and moving ways. I was going to say that despite this, reading this book is like expecting to jump into pool and float back to the surface, but instead you start drowning, sucking up little bits of air at a time, just trying to survive. I was going to say that as readable as it was, it was just too much for me to handle, and that these girls always seem like they need to learn the same lessons over and over again, and the lesson never sticks.

But then I got to the end, and I started crying, and I couldn't stop. To be honest about it, I'm still crying right now. (They're the good kind of tears, by the way, the bittersweet ones. Ann Brashares is not Nicholas Sparks or Jodi Picoult, both of whom I always feel manipulated by, like with them tears are the goal, and not just a product of something great that they've created. Sparks and Picoult want me to feel luxuriously sad about my life, Brashares just wants to tell me something true. Does that make any sense?) This book just got to me. It got to me on an emotional level that a book hasn't in a really long time, and there's nothing I can do about it. I don't feel like critically evaluating this book for its failings. I only feel like feeling. So that's what I'm going to do.

I'm warning you right now, if you pick this up, you better have a box of tissues ready by the end, and your best friends on speed dial.

Man, I feel sad all over again.

*Excluding both Harry Potter which wrecked me and the fiscal year end budget numbers which aren't depressing in themselves but an accountant I am not.