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God help me because I'm certainly at odds with myself here; this book is all shades of effed up and I normally would have scowled at something this ridiculous but I didn't. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it and I'm seriously confused how do I rate this when majority of the characters were horrible but Cotugno's writing was such a saving compelling grace. Man, I think my hormones are playing a joke on me or something.
When Molly came home for the summer after a year of boarding school in Arizona, the townspeople weren't very welcoming. Julia Donnelly, in particular, already egged her house, left her a note of dirty slut, and keyed her car out of spite following the revelation of Molly sleeping with one of the other two Donnelly boys, Gabe. It wouldn't have been too much of a big deal had Gabe not been the older brother of Patrick, who at the time, was Molly's boyfriend. Thanks to her dear mom who made a bestseller book out of it, almost everybody now knew of her big mistake and thought of her as the town whore.
I really have a low tolerance when it comes to cheating whether in real life or in books, but I like my characters flawed so sometimes I can endure when it's all written in the past. There'll always be a whole book left for characters to grow and the most important thing for me is to see them make wise decisions and refrain from doing dumb mistakes over and over again. That's not the case here though, because Molly already cheated once yet she did it again twice, thrice, many times. Our protagonist here never learned a thing or two, as she switches from brother to brother, not caring deep enough for innocent people who get hurt. Just when she's finally getting back into the good graces of her old friends, these relationships are once again destroyed because she couldn't decide which Donnelly boy to keep. It's a shame. But it's not as if it's Molly's entire fault. No matter how sweet and smooth of a talker Gabe is, and how adorable and serious Patrick is, they're at fault as much as Molly is, but sadly only Molly takes all the blame and insults. This just shows how double standards exist even until today.
As I was saying, no matter how awful Molly's actions were, I didn't have strong feelings of contempt towards her, enough to drive me to almost burn the book. In truth, I felt sympathetic especially at the first part where almost everyone sends her hate as if she committed murder. And it's already bad enough that her mom wrote her mistakes in a novel and even got to the point of telling People it was in fact inspired by her. I was really bothered in this part because you should feel safe telling even the dirtiest secrets to your own mother, knowing fully well she'll be by your side and wouldn't go around spreading these things to other folks. But Molly's mom is anything but a good confidante, which feels totally horribly wrong. I was sad to see their relationship fall apart.
[a:Katie Cotugno|6921953|Katie Cotugno|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1526079188p2/6921953.jpg] took a great risk writing a book with such a taboo topic. Perhaps what she's trying to tell us is that only until a mistake is done repeatedly that someone finally learns a lesson and only on the nth time deemed already too many times that this lesson gives the hardest impact. I guess I'd settle for giving this 2 stars.
When Molly came home for the summer after a year of boarding school in Arizona, the townspeople weren't very welcoming. Julia Donnelly, in particular, already egged her house, left her a note of dirty slut, and keyed her car out of spite following the revelation of Molly sleeping with one of the other two Donnelly boys, Gabe. It wouldn't have been too much of a big deal had Gabe not been the older brother of Patrick, who at the time, was Molly's boyfriend. Thanks to her dear mom who made a bestseller book out of it, almost everybody now knew of her big mistake and thought of her as the town whore.
I really have a low tolerance when it comes to cheating whether in real life or in books, but I like my characters flawed so sometimes I can endure when it's all written in the past. There'll always be a whole book left for characters to grow and the most important thing for me is to see them make wise decisions and refrain from doing dumb mistakes over and over again. That's not the case here though, because Molly already cheated once yet she did it again twice, thrice, many times. Our protagonist here never learned a thing or two, as she switches from brother to brother, not caring deep enough for innocent people who get hurt. Just when she's finally getting back into the good graces of her old friends, these relationships are once again destroyed because she couldn't decide which Donnelly boy to keep. It's a shame. But it's not as if it's Molly's entire fault. No matter how sweet and smooth of a talker Gabe is, and how adorable and serious Patrick is, they're at fault as much as Molly is, but sadly only Molly takes all the blame and insults. This just shows how double standards exist even until today.
As I was saying, no matter how awful Molly's actions were, I didn't have strong feelings of contempt towards her, enough to drive me to almost burn the book. In truth, I felt sympathetic especially at the first part where almost everyone sends her hate as if she committed murder. And it's already bad enough that her mom wrote her mistakes in a novel and even got to the point of telling People it was in fact inspired by her. I was really bothered in this part because you should feel safe telling even the dirtiest secrets to your own mother, knowing fully well she'll be by your side and wouldn't go around spreading these things to other folks. But Molly's mom is anything but a good confidante, which feels totally horribly wrong. I was sad to see their relationship fall apart.
[a:Katie Cotugno|6921953|Katie Cotugno|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1526079188p2/6921953.jpg] took a great risk writing a book with such a taboo topic. Perhaps what she's trying to tell us is that only until a mistake is done repeatedly that someone finally learns a lesson and only on the nth time deemed already too many times that this lesson gives the hardest impact. I guess I'd settle for giving this 2 stars.