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Title: Frustratingly engaging
Review: I wanted to like this book. The premise was interesting. The prose was nice. The dialogue pretty real.I even bought a few of the characters. I wanted to like it a lot. But that Carrie Bell was a real piece of work. The author's insistence on perpetuating the image of the Midwest as a vapid expanse of bland nothingness and by contrast, New York City as a cultural mecca so ripe with coolness that even tortured, emotionally detached losers are deep, is an insult to residents of both areas. Don't even get me started on the inexplicable arrival of the very trendy Gay Male Best Friend character...All that said, I did finish it. I found it interesting. And, glaring cliches aside, well written.Perhaps it was simply the Wisconsinite (NOT Wisconsonian) in me who just couldn't get over the insult of having being born and bred in the same state as that whiny, shallow Carrie Bell.
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