Book Reviews: Rescue by Anita Shreve and Posh by Lucy Jackson

I've been thinking about this recently, and I want to be more consistent about doing book reviews of the books that I read, as well as rating them. I've come up with a fairly non-traditional rating system, and will attach my thoughts at the end of each review. Without further adeiu, here's what I read this week:

As a novice paramedic, Webster responds to the scene of a nasty car crash. The woman, Sheila, is obviously intoxicated and lucky to be alive. Despite everything, Webster falls in love with Sheila and the two embark on a journey that takes them through parenthood, marriage, alcoholism, and eventually Webster parenting their daughter Rowan alone. During Rowan's senior year in high school, a series of events occurs that causes Webster to reach out to Sheila again.

Overall, the storyline and plot of Rescue were fairly predictable, but my real joy in reading Shreve is the characters anyway. Shreve simply has a way of drawing me into her characters--making me love them, hate them, get mad at them, and rejoice with them. When I'm not reading, I find myself thinking of them. I stayed up far past my bedtime last night to finish their stories, and when I did, I wanted to know even more about their lives--and for me, that's the true test of whether or not a novel is "good". Overall:

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Posh is set in a very exclusive private high school in New York, and is alternately narrated by several caricatures of the individuals that you might expect to find associated with an exclusive private school.  For me though, the motivation to read the book didn't really have much to do with the storyline--I saw the book in the featured section of our local library, and in my rush, mistakenly thought it was Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep, which I've been meaning to read. Upon getting home and realizing that it wasn't actually Prep at all, a quick search revealed that the author, Lucy Jackson, was actually a very well known author working under a pseudonym. For quite some time, no one actually knew who Lucy Jackson really was, though her real identity has since been revealed. I was kind of fascinated. I wondered what in the world was IN this book Posh that would cause the author to publish it under a pseudonym! And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, was my motivation for reading this book.

 When I was just a few chapters into the book earlier this week, I described it as a literary version of reality TV, in the best way possible--and it was. Alternately witty, insightful, and car wreck that you couldn't take your eyes off of, Posh was certainly an interesting novel. It was a quick read for me, and just what I needed at the time (something fairly entertaining, but not especially deep). Not particularly noteworthy, but a good book none-the-less. Overall, I enjoyed it, but it just wasn't a favorite.