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bookbugg's review against another edition
5.0
This was easily my favorite book when I was in high school. I will find and buy a copy to reread very soon. I wanted to be Harper so bad! I fell in love with all of the characters and their stories and longed for their kind of friendship in my own life. The relationships they had, the journeys they experienced and the paths they took were so inspirational to me. This book was actually picked off of the shelf at Barns and Nobles from my stepdad for a Christmas gift our first year together and I finished it in a week and asked for the second one. The writing-amazing, the plot-amazing...Absolutely loved, can't wait to own and will read again.
theresidentbookworm's review against another edition
5.0
I had a huge hole in my heart (and my library) after I read the fourth (and at the time final) book of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I really loved the Sisterhood. Okay, I still love the Sisterhood. Still, I needed something else to comfort me, and so I picked up Bass Ackwards and Belly Up mostly because I heard it described as a grown-up Sisterhood.
Bass Ackwards and Belly Up is a lot like the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants on the surface: four longtime best friends (which means four points of view), coming of age plotline, great friendships, etc. What sets Bass Ackwards apart, however, is its realism. The Sisterhood always felt to me like the idealized level of friendship, the ones I wished I had, the kind we always see in movies and books. Most friends don't have magic jeans or a trip to Greece to bond after we go to college. Real friendship doesn't really look like the Sisterhood. It looks more like Bass Ackwards and Belly Up. Harper, Sophie, Kate, and Becca are best friends, but they have their differences. Sometimes they're closer to certain people in the group than others. Sometimes they don't tell each other the stuff they should. Sometimes they surprise each other. Bass Ackwards depicts longterm friendships as they actually are: wonderful and complicated and funny and supportive. You have to work to maintain them in college, and you figure out which ones are important. I've had the same three best friends (aka the fam) for years, and so Bass Ackwards always feel authentic to me.
Bass Ackwards and Belly Up is a great book about friendship, but it is a fantastic book about college and becoming an adult. I identify so much with Bass Ackwards now in ways that I couldn't at sixteen. Harper Waddle and I especially have a scary amount in common. I've experienced a lot of the same things, and I understand why she did what she did. It was dumb and a little selfish, but I understand why she was embarrassed and afraid. There's this awful stigma around people who don't get into the right college or don't go or drop out, and it's utter crap. Bass Ackwards shows all the difficulties of "adulting" as I like to call it. I kind of feel like I'm playing at it most of the time, and Bass Ackwards perfectly captures the feeling.
I love Bass Ackwards and Belly Up almost as much as I love the Sisterhood. That's epic love right there. Recommended!
Bass Ackwards and Belly Up is a lot like the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants on the surface: four longtime best friends (which means four points of view), coming of age plotline, great friendships, etc. What sets Bass Ackwards apart, however, is its realism. The Sisterhood always felt to me like the idealized level of friendship, the ones I wished I had, the kind we always see in movies and books. Most friends don't have magic jeans or a trip to Greece to bond after we go to college. Real friendship doesn't really look like the Sisterhood. It looks more like Bass Ackwards and Belly Up. Harper, Sophie, Kate, and Becca are best friends, but they have their differences. Sometimes they're closer to certain people in the group than others. Sometimes they don't tell each other the stuff they should. Sometimes they surprise each other. Bass Ackwards depicts longterm friendships as they actually are: wonderful and complicated and funny and supportive. You have to work to maintain them in college, and you figure out which ones are important. I've had the same three best friends (aka the fam) for years, and so Bass Ackwards always feel authentic to me.
Bass Ackwards and Belly Up is a great book about friendship, but it is a fantastic book about college and becoming an adult. I identify so much with Bass Ackwards now in ways that I couldn't at sixteen. Harper Waddle and I especially have a scary amount in common. I've experienced a lot of the same things, and I understand why she did what she did. It was dumb and a little selfish, but I understand why she was embarrassed and afraid. There's this awful stigma around people who don't get into the right college or don't go or drop out, and it's utter crap. Bass Ackwards shows all the difficulties of "adulting" as I like to call it. I kind of feel like I'm playing at it most of the time, and Bass Ackwards perfectly captures the feeling.
I love Bass Ackwards and Belly Up almost as much as I love the Sisterhood. That's epic love right there. Recommended!
celebrin's review against another edition
2.0
This was an okay book. I wasn't fond of it, I didn't hate it.
bookoala's review against another edition
4.0
This took me back to middle school when I read it for the first time. Four best friends discover their dreams, their passions and themselves and those are things you can't always learn in college...
bookishbritney's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoyed this book. It reminded me of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants which was a book that my friends and I loved throughout high school.
It's about four best friends who have just graduated from high school and have their futures planned out. Except Harper didn't get accepted into NYU and that was the only school she applied to. After dealing with the initial shock and self-pity, she decides she is going to move into her parents' basement and start writing the next Great American Novel. And decides to tell her best friends and family a little white lie- that it is part of her Dream, and not the truth about NYU. To her dismay, two of her best friends Sophie and Kate decide to skip the college path and figure out their Dreams as well. Sophie moves to Los Angeles to become an actress and Kate goes off to backpack throughout Europe to discover just what her Dream is. That leaves Becca to follow her Dreams of skiing with her university team and falling in love.
Each girls' story is entertaining and fun to read which is rare for me because I usually can't stand at least one or two characters in books with multiple points of view. Each girl had their own issues and were trying to discover themselves. They had to adjust to major and minor changes and from being away from the people who were always there for them.
Everyone can relate to growing up and that transitional period where you aren't sure what you want to do or be or what to expect from your future. It's a bittersweet and scary feeling and Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain do a great job capturing those moments and how the girls all deal with the changes in their lives.
There is romance and travel and tough life decisions. I can't wait to read the sequel, Footfree and Fancyloose.
It's about four best friends who have just graduated from high school and have their futures planned out. Except Harper didn't get accepted into NYU and that was the only school she applied to. After dealing with the initial shock and self-pity, she decides she is going to move into her parents' basement and start writing the next Great American Novel. And decides to tell her best friends and family a little white lie- that it is part of her Dream, and not the truth about NYU. To her dismay, two of her best friends Sophie and Kate decide to skip the college path and figure out their Dreams as well. Sophie moves to Los Angeles to become an actress and Kate goes off to backpack throughout Europe to discover just what her Dream is. That leaves Becca to follow her Dreams of skiing with her university team and falling in love.
Each girls' story is entertaining and fun to read which is rare for me because I usually can't stand at least one or two characters in books with multiple points of view. Each girl had their own issues and were trying to discover themselves. They had to adjust to major and minor changes and from being away from the people who were always there for them.
Everyone can relate to growing up and that transitional period where you aren't sure what you want to do or be or what to expect from your future. It's a bittersweet and scary feeling and Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain do a great job capturing those moments and how the girls all deal with the changes in their lives.
There is romance and travel and tough life decisions. I can't wait to read the sequel, Footfree and Fancyloose.
arisbookcorner's review against another edition
5.0
I had such a fantastic time reading this book! I could not set it down (I have the bags under my eyes to prove it). More on the whitewashed paperback covers for this book and the sequel later via the blog
A unique aspect of this novel is that the girls aren't in constant contact with each other. I thought that made the story more interesting. Let's be honest if one friend is in college, another one still lives in their hometown, one is traveling throughout Europe and the other is in L.A. you aren't going to talk everyday. It's just not possible. I am slightly biased in that, like Harper, I didn't get into NYU and I didn't tell my friends. But unlike Harper I did apply to other schools but as someone who is not as excited about college as I would have been if I was attending a certain other school, I was positively green with envy at the courage Harper, Kate, Sophie (who is biracial) and even Becca exhibited in going for their dreams. Sometimes I imagine 'what if' I worked for a political camapign during the fall instead of going to college right away....and then reapplying to my dream schools. But I digress. I was really glad the authors kept Becca's story interesting, I was worried she would fall by the wayside since she was going to Middlebury but they kept the storyline fresh. I only wish they had gone into more detail about her college experiences (ski training, other extraccuriculars, mention of her classes, other dating experiences). I was also quite pleased that Kate didn't drop everything when she met a hot Swiss guy, her storyline was very impressive because it was atypical of many YA books out there set in foreign countries. And BIG UPs to the author for making Sophie a well-rounded character and not some Black character from a 'problem household'. She was funny, conceited and knowledgable about her heritage but not overly so (as in she didn't think about it every waking minute, solidly middle class), in other words she was a breath of fresh air.
I think it should have been made more clear that there was going to be a sequel. I already knew there would be but if I read this book in 2006 and had to wait till 2008 for the sequel I would have been furious! There are so many loose ends. Other than that nothing I disliked about this book, it's perfect in terms of being a read for recently-graduated-high-school-students.
Favorite Quotes: "Harper had started as the engine of the Dream Train, but now she was officially the caboose." (pg. 225).
"She had taken success for granted so many times in her life, that she'd never stopped to consider the circumstances under which she could fail, and whether she would have the ability to get back on her feet again." Late, pg. 262
PS I'm reading the sequel now and aside from my irritation at the whitewashed cover I must admit I don't like it as much so far.
A unique aspect of this novel is that the girls aren't in constant contact with each other. I thought that made the story more interesting. Let's be honest if one friend is in college, another one still lives in their hometown, one is traveling throughout Europe and the other is in L.A. you aren't going to talk everyday. It's just not possible. I am slightly biased in that, like Harper, I didn't get into NYU and I didn't tell my friends. But unlike Harper I did apply to other schools but as someone who is not as excited about college as I would have been if I was attending a certain other school, I was positively green with envy at the courage Harper, Kate, Sophie (who is biracial) and even Becca exhibited in going for their dreams. Sometimes I imagine 'what if' I worked for a political camapign during the fall instead of going to college right away....and then reapplying to my dream schools. But I digress. I was really glad the authors kept Becca's story interesting, I was worried she would fall by the wayside since she was going to Middlebury but they kept the storyline fresh. I only wish they had gone into more detail about her college experiences (ski training, other extraccuriculars, mention of her classes, other dating experiences). I was also quite pleased that Kate didn't drop everything when she met a hot Swiss guy, her storyline was very impressive because it was atypical of many YA books out there set in foreign countries. And BIG UPs to the author for making Sophie a well-rounded character and not some Black character from a 'problem household'. She was funny, conceited and knowledgable about her heritage but not overly so (as in she didn't think about it every waking minute, solidly middle class), in other words she was a breath of fresh air.
I think it should have been made more clear that there was going to be a sequel. I already knew there would be but if I read this book in 2006 and had to wait till 2008 for the sequel I would have been furious! There are so many loose ends. Other than that nothing I disliked about this book, it's perfect in terms of being a read for recently-graduated-high-school-students.
Favorite Quotes: "Harper had started as the engine of the Dream Train, but now she was officially the caboose." (pg. 225).
"She had taken success for granted so many times in her life, that she'd never stopped to consider the circumstances under which she could fail, and whether she would have the ability to get back on her feet again." Late, pg. 262
PS I'm reading the sequel now and aside from my irritation at the whitewashed cover I must admit I don't like it as much so far.
meghan's review against another edition
2.0
It was cute and I liked it but it didn't appeal to me enough to get the second book.
runa's review against another edition
3.0
Bass Ackwards and Belly Up seemed like a rip-off of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. As glad as I was to read another book featuring characters in their older teens, it wasn't as great as I had hoped. It dives right into the middle of a hugely dramatic time in these four teens' lives, and while a bit confusing, eventually everything makes sense. The storylines are interesting enough, but they were pretty simple and very predictable stories for the most part. The characters were made lovable through the writing early on, but since they were all separated, the story wasn't as interesting as it could have been if they were together, much like Sisterhood again. At least with the Sisterhood series, when the girls were apart, they were in regular correspondence and we as readers were witness to that, but here, they were all on their separate adventures, and it was harder to imagine how crazyawesome the story would have been with them all together. Midway, the stories just lose all their push. Something happens, and it all becomes dull. The girls' characterization seems to fall by the wayside, and while they had their moments, the second half of the book was not nearly as enjoyable a read as the first. The one pairing I was interested in had no resolution, and I was very disappointed about that. Many of the stories are left ambiguous, which makes some of them seem utterly pointless and a waste of time to have read. I would just stick with reading the Sisterhood series instead of picking this one up.
Rating: 3/5
Rating: 3/5