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pamelarope's review
3.0
The good: Amalia is likeable and Lerengis isn't his usual obnoxious self. The bad: the book was more about Maggie's problems then Amalia. I get it's about her trying to help her friend, but I wanted to know more about the aftermath of her stalker boyfriend. Guess I should read her first diary.
finesilkflower's review
2.0
Amalia researches eating disorders.
Amalia tries to be a good friend to Maggie as she (Maggie) struggles with an eating disorder. Amalia also organizes a gig for their garage band, Vanish, necessitating managing Maggie's performance anxiety. Finally, she has a flirtation with a guy called Brendan who wears an Operation Ivy shirt. That's about all I got for plot.
Again, grading on a scale, because California Diaries books are pretty enjoyable on the whole. That said, this one is pretty clunky. The parts don't seem to fit together that well. The romance aspect is played up on the cover and marketing, but it's really shoehorned in C plot, and Amalia has about one page of feelings about starting to like and trust someone for the first time after getting out of an abusive relationship. Most of the book is taken up with Maggie stuff. While I don't think it's necessarily bad to do an eating disorder plotline from the point of the view of the friend, because Maggie is another narrator who just had a book, this feels like way too much Maggie.
One of the early scenes in this book is a good object lesson in how to do infodump well. Amalia reads a magazine article about what to say and not say to a friend with an eating disorder, and finds herself unable to follow the advice in actual conversation. This is a great scene because Amalia's attempts to follow the advice help to cement it in our minds for future reference, and because it also makes a point about how hard it can be to follow abstract advice in the real world. Amalia's bungling is funny and relatable.
Unfortunately, the following scene is an object lesson in how to do infodump poorly. After making the first steps with Maggie, Amalia goes online and researches a lot more information about eating disorders, which she simply lists as bullet points in her diary. It just feels like wasted pages as there's no way we are going to remember or care about it without seeing its applications.
Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Peter Lerangis
Timing: September 23 to October 10. School's in again, and Dawn has apparently returned from Stonybrook. It never fails to infuriate me how we can read a year go by, watch the kids take their final exams, and then school starts again and they are in the SAME GRADES. Ah, well, that is what my revised timeline project is for.
Revised Timeline: Academic year 2 after graduation. We must continue pretending these young adults have jobs, not school.
Amalia tries to be a good friend to Maggie as she (Maggie) struggles with an eating disorder. Amalia also organizes a gig for their garage band, Vanish, necessitating managing Maggie's performance anxiety. Finally, she has a flirtation with a guy called Brendan who wears an Operation Ivy shirt. That's about all I got for plot.
Again, grading on a scale, because California Diaries books are pretty enjoyable on the whole. That said, this one is pretty clunky. The parts don't seem to fit together that well. The romance aspect is played up on the cover and marketing, but it's really shoehorned in C plot, and Amalia has about one page of feelings about starting to like and trust someone for the first time after getting out of an abusive relationship. Most of the book is taken up with Maggie stuff. While I don't think it's necessarily bad to do an eating disorder plotline from the point of the view of the friend, because Maggie is another narrator who just had a book, this feels like way too much Maggie.
One of the early scenes in this book is a good object lesson in how to do infodump well. Amalia reads a magazine article about what to say and not say to a friend with an eating disorder, and finds herself unable to follow the advice in actual conversation. This is a great scene because Amalia's attempts to follow the advice help to cement it in our minds for future reference, and because it also makes a point about how hard it can be to follow abstract advice in the real world. Amalia's bungling is funny and relatable.
Unfortunately, the following scene is an object lesson in how to do infodump poorly. After making the first steps with Maggie, Amalia goes online and researches a lot more information about eating disorders, which she simply lists as bullet points in her diary. It just feels like wasted pages as there's no way we are going to remember or care about it without seeing its applications.
Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Peter Lerangis
Timing: September 23 to October 10. School's in again, and Dawn has apparently returned from Stonybrook. It never fails to infuriate me how we can read a year go by, watch the kids take their final exams, and then school starts again and they are in the SAME GRADES. Ah, well, that is what my revised timeline project is for.
Revised Timeline: Academic year 2 after graduation. We must continue pretending these young adults have jobs, not school.
sammah's review
3.0
While I liked this one slightly less than the first Amalia book, it was still good. It was interesting to read about Maggie's eating disorder from the prospective of someone who cared about her. It's so hard when you have a friend going through something like that, whether it's a mental illness, an eating disorder, a drug problem, etc and you're trying to figure out how to talk to them without being accusatory. It was nice to see how she was getting past her relationship with James and growing as a person, and how she was evolving. She was a really great character.
xtinamorse's review
Read my recap at A Year with the BSC via Stoneybrook Forever: www.livethemovies.com/bsc-blog/california-diaries-9-amalia
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