I read the first one earlier and I loved it. I watched the movie and I loved it. I was in absolute eager anticipation to read the second book in the series of four books that I just knew in my heart there was no place to go but down.
The story follows the girls as they are on a new summer with different goals and issues. Tibby is at video camp finding out who she is and whether she will stand up for what she belives or follow the crowd. Her crowd may be different and more "rebel" but she still finds herself a follower and has to deal with the challenes that accompany this. Carmen is at home and seething in anger at her mother's new love (which really does make me want to puke, Carmen, i feel you!). The Lena is still in love with a guy she exchanged two words with in the previous book and spends the entire time in angst and then in a few awkwardly written secnes, and Bridget is visiting her grandmother loosely disguised and learning about her past. Perhaps her story, or at least a few parts annoyed me less than the book in general.
In general this was a terrible book that made me cringe as I read it. Here's the deal. I hate adverbs. You may as well take long fingernails and run them down a chalkboard while I sit immobilized. This is adverbs for me. "She happily sat down as her mother admiringly pulled a light blue sweater gingerly over her head as the car lazily hummed in the driveway" GAG! Not just that but the story was just bad. It was just bad and lazy.
Furthermore I dont know if you've heard of the Kaavya Scandal. She wrote a book and it turned out it was plagiarized but also the rest of it was co-written by Alloy publishing. They basically outlined the story for her and wrote the first four chapters of the story. Well, I was checking the copyright of this book and it was identical to the copyright of Kaavya's book. The writer of this book isn't as original as she claims. A factory book mass produced to keep young girls money rolling in. This is disappointing as there are many writer slike JK Rowling, and Jhumpa Lahiri who are truly gifted, dont use adverbs like a four year old would stickers (though JK's latest is adverb crazy), and write their own stuff.
For these reasons I dont think I'll be getting a third helping of the traveling pants....
