It's been almost a week, and I keep meaning to post the verdict of out last book club. Only three of us made it, but we all really liked it, with some qualifiers.
None of us really felt sorry for Bridge, the girl at soccer camp. Her coach should have known better, and we felt that she was foolish. None of us would have been friends with her in high school, mostly because she was so driven and focused we wouldn't have been able to relate to her. Our verdict was mixed on Lena - some of us felt she was stuck up, some of us felt sorry for her, but we agreed that she should have told her grandparents the truth sooner.
Carmen was the one we felt the most sympathy for. Her father was a toad for not telling her sooner, and for not going after her when she ran away. And we all really liked Bailey, the girl with leukemia and helped Tibby look at things in a new way.
Except for Bailey, we did note the complete passiveness of the secondary characters in each girl's story. They were wishy-washy and barely reactive, and mostly frustrating.
It sounds like we didn't like it that much, but we really did enjoy this book. Our next book is The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, which I started reading a while back but never finished. It's slightly surreal and full of that strange British humour that makes Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy so amusing.
