"Why is a bookstore war and a minor accident and a kiss and a mutual love for books so confusing?"
Madeline Moore's biological mom, Zelda, had two kids by different dads as a teenager, foisted the kids upon her older sister Astrid, and has otherwise been flaky and disappearing their entire lives. Madeline and Benny have learned from that experience and are deeply unimpressed/"oh, eff this again" about finding out that Dahlia is moving home "to stay this time!" Benny just goes to live at his dad's most of the time to avoid Dahlia (Madeline's dad is a deadbeat, not in the book), but Madeline is stuck with Dahlia in the house, going after her clothes, supposedly "working" in the family business and generally being immature at age 34. I do not blame Madeline a whit for being dismissive of her mother and generally only finding her useful for getting alcohol, or whatever.
Madeline is obsessed with the family bookstore, Books and Moore, and her entire life plan is to grow up, get through college, and then run the store. However, this gets thrown awry when Astrid announces at the start of the summer that the bookstore is going to have to close because the rent is going up by A LOT. Between that and the fancy bookstore across the street, Prologue, opening, Madeline's mad and determined to save B&M. And to her credit, she gets creative at putting on bookstore events, lining up foodstuffs, etc. She reminded me a lot of Jenna in Rules of the Road and Best Foot Forward in that both of them are ABSOLUTELY DIEHARD in love with their retail business, passionate about it, more passionate about it than anyone else (god knows her family is pretty much ready for the business to go). I will say that ah...the eventual outcome of the bookstore is pretty much foreshadowed by financial facts, though. If this hurts your heart, maybe skip this one.
Less to her credit is getting into a bookstore war with Jasper Hamada, the hot guy across the streets who family owns Prologue. Jasper gets various rude/hot nicknames throughout the book as he and Madeline do petty crap to each other via signs (more fun) and somewhat less petty when they start to mess with the other one's businesses, and I confess I almost went Do Not Finish around that point out of uncomfortableness and "is this going to get into legal trouble?" concerns. But after Jasper gets into a car accident in front of Madeline due to the prank war, they get over it in a hurry and get down to romantic business, or at least start at it. I don't know how much I got into the relationship--the prank war was a bit much--but it improves, I'll say, and Jasper's secret career dreams are pretty cool.
I'm not sure what to make of the whole Dahlia plotline. Am I supposed to care about her? I feel like the author wanted us to see Madeline and Dahlia's relationship improve--which it does, I guess, as they finally start hanging out a bit--but mostly I was all "I can see exactly why Madeline is annoyed at her flakiness" at the start and was more baffled at "uh, NOW you want to be attached to her?" At one point Madeline calls Astrid "Mom" and Dahlia gets ticked off and I just want to be all "Oh, come on, lady, what did you expect?" The exact line is "I've been working my ass off this summer to earn that stupid, pointless name and you just accidentally call Astrid it?" That was when I was all, god, Dahlia, you're being a jerk and you haven't earned being a parent at all just because you've hung around this summer. I do not have much sympathy there and I enjoyed Madeline's telling her off and saying that Astrid has been earning the title her whole life, not just for two months.
I guess the happy ending there is Madeline realizing that Dahlia is what she is and isn't going to be there a whole lot or have much depth to her. "Maybe we should have just let her swoop in and be the cool mom she tries so hard to be. We've always had Astrid for the important stuff....maybe all this time we should have just been enjoying Dahlia while she lasted....I kind of get her. She's just not mom material, and I'm tired of being mad at her for it. She's like a firework: burns brightly, loudly, and fades away quickly. The best thing she could ever have done for Benny and me was give us up." Sometimes the only happy ending you're gonna get with a person is realizing they're always going to fail you and just giving up on your expectations of them.
Overall, I give it three stars. I have mixed feelings on this. Kind of like some things, kinda don't like others, nearly quit in the middle but pulled on through to the finish. I appreciate Madeline's bookstore passion and how that resolves, and Jasper seems like a nice dude. Good luck working that out at college, y'all.
Comments