Lovely Little Shelf

The Book: How to Buy a Love of Reading, by Tanya Egan Gibson

The Story: Carley Wells is an overweight 15 year old girl living in New York.  Her family is uber-rich because her dad invented a new kind of bra that every woman loves.  Her mom is cold and rude and is always on Carley about being dull and fat.  At a friend’s birthday party, all the guests make busts of their heads because Bunnie, the birthday girl has a supposed love of sculpture.  Really her parents have just shoved this love onto her to make her more interesting.  Carely’s parents are inspired and decide to make Carley’s “thing” reading.

For her birthday, the Wells decide that Carley should have a book written just for her.  They pick a writer, Bree,  and have her move into their mansion and write Carley’s novel.  The only stipulation is that it has to be medieval themed because they want a medieval themed party.

The side stories are as follows:  Hunter is a neighbor who is popular and gorgeous.  He’s a playboy for sure, but has a special friendship with Carley that no one understands.  Amber is Carley’s best girl friend.  She’s ditzy and anorexic.  Hunter fools around with her and it makes Carley mad.  Hunter is addicted to pills and booze. Carley’s dad and Hunter’s mom (who has a Jackie O. obsession) are in love and have been having an affair for quite some time.  Justin, a famous author that lives in the neighborhood, goes way back with Bree, the hired author.  They kind of end up having a thing going on. And so on and so forth.

The real story here is the friendship between Hunter and Carley.  Watching Hunter kind of self-implode before her eyes is tearing Carley up but she doesn’t really know how to deal with it.  The depth of these characters and their bond is what keeps the story moving along and keeps the reader rooting for Carley.

What I Thought: When I first started this book, I was impressed by the wit.  There were just so many little witty instances of the author poking fun at the uber-academic and the uber-rich.  The kids making busts of their face in the first chapter was hilarious and set the mood perfectly for this novel.

Carley, upon introduction, was kind of unlikable, but as the book went on I found myself really relating to her.  By the end, I was sold on her completely and just rooting her along.  I think that the author did a great job of capturing that feeling of being a teenager and being torn between doing what’s right, pleasing your parents, being “in,” and being loyal to your friends or just telling everyone to screw off and going to do your own thing.  I think that is a pretty basic struggle that everyone goes through and it was expressed well here.  It’s about learning to live for yourself, be honest with the people who you love, and just grow up… and who can’t relate to that?

My only real problem with this book was that it was sometimes over written.  With the story-within-a-story, the dozens of characters and sub-plots, the backstories and flashbacks all going on at once, some chapters turned into kind of a muddle.  This is actually talked about in the book, so maybe she wrote it this way on purpose, but I have to say that I don’t think that it added to the story in any way.

Conclusion: With only a few little flaws, this is an addictively readable book.  It was written for book lovers- there are tons of literary references and  talk of how books are put together. Good stuff. GIve it a go.

*Edited to add** Just got an email from Tanya Egan Gibson, which is fun stuff. I love hearing from authors.  One of the things in the email was a link to the website for this book.  I’m totally in love.  If you didn’t want to read the book before, you will after checking out the site. Way cool.