Review: Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner
Title: Certain Girls
Hardcover, 386 pages
Author: Jennifer Weiner
Publisher: Atria
Publication Date: April 8, 2008
From Goodreads.com:
Now Cannie’s back. After her debut novel – a fictionalized (and highly sexualized) version of her life – became an overnight bestseller, she dropped out of the public eye and turned to writing science fiction under a pseudonym. She’s happily married to the tall, charming diet doctor Peter Krushelevansky and has settled into a life that she finds wonderfully predictable – knitting in the front row of her daughter Joy’s drama rehearsals, volunteering at the library, and taking over-forty yoga classes with her best friend Samantha.
As preparations for Joy’s bat mitzvah begin, everything seems right in Cannie’s world. Then Joy discovers the novel Cannie wrote years before and suddenly finds herself faced with what she thinks is the truth about her own conception – the story her mother hid from her all her life. When Peter surprises his wife by saying he wants to have a baby, the family is forced to reconsider its history, its future, and what it means to be truly happy.
Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner is a sequel to her popular book Good in Bed. We get a return of heroine Cannie Shapiro, who is now married (to the lovely doctor from the first book), has a bestselling novel (based loosely on her own life), and a teenage daughter, Joy.
I was pumped up to read this sequel ever since I read Good in Bed and was able to find it at my public library after trying a few times. I was sucked right back in to the story, which was easy because I had just read the first of the series not too long ago. The book has a lot of flashbacks to describe things that had happened in Good in Bed, and also developed Cannie’s character. At first I was disappointed that the gap between the books was so large (more than ten years), but it ended up filling in enough information that I was satisfied in the end. For having such high expectations about a book, I wasn’t let down, and feel closer about the series. (I still wouldn’t mind reading another book about Joy or Cannie if one happens to be written, though.) There was one event in the book that I could have done without, but I won’t mention it here in case you are planning on reading it – it is possible you will feel the same after you finish.
Book Cover: 4/5
Book Title: 4/5
Plot: 8/10
Characters: 9/10
Writing: 8/10
Ending: 6/10
Overall: 39/50
