Forever...

by Judy Blume

Dedication: "For Randy as promised ... with love"

First paragraph: "Sybil Davison has a genius I.Q. and has been laid by at least six different guys. She told me herself, the last time she was visiting her cousin, Erica, who is my good friend. Erica says this is because of Sybil's fat problem and her need to feel loved---the getting laid part, that is. The genius I.Q. is just luck or genes or something. I"m not sure that either explanation is 100 percent right but generally Erica is very good at analyzing people."

Review: Plot of the book is pretty simple: Katherine, Kath for short, loves Michael. Michael loves Kath. There is the looming future, i.e. graduation, that could rip them apart or maybe bring them together.

... ... ... I have never seen so many ellipses in one book. (I would have said, "I've never seen so many ellipses in my life but, thanks to my favorite people on Twitter, that's not exactly true.) The ellipses were overwhelming and the dialogue was so dry.

When I say the dialogue was dry I mean, I was two chapters in and cringing every time someone spoke. I would have stopped reading then and there but it had taken me a whole minute and a half to get through chapter one so I figured I'd finish the book pretty quickly--luckily, I was right.

So supposedly Michael and Kath are super in love. What they have is something special. But, I didn't buy it. At all. Their conversations were not special. To me, it felt like guy wanted sex. Girl didn't. Eventually girl did so guy got what he wanted. Somewhere in the mix "I love you"'s were thrown in to make it sound more meaningful. It felt like Blume just wrote "and then they fell in love through a series of meaningful conversations that I'm too lazy, or incapable of typing out." Maybe that was Blume's point the whole time? That an 18 year old can't actually be in love? I don't think that was her point but if it was, she definitely came close to proving it.

Other than that, the only reason I finished the book was because it was short and easy. If I'd gone to bed with a chapter unfinished I probably wouldn't have picked it up again.

In a way it's just an interesting sex ed book. I guess if you want your kid to figure out how the birds and the bees work and where to go to get sex ed information so you don't have to have "The Talk" then you should have them read this.

Eh.