Author: Katie Cotugno
Publisher: Quercus Publishing
Pages: 374
Format: Paperback
Source: Won from giveaway
Description:
From the acclaimed author of How to Love comes another stunning contemporary novel, perfect for fans of Sarah Dessen.
Molly Barlow is facing one long, hot summer--99 days--with the boy whose heart she broke and the boy she broke it for . . . his brother.
Day 1: Julia Donnelly eggs my house my first night back in Star Lake, and that's how I know everyone still remembers everything. She has every right to hate me, of course: I broke Patrick Donnelly's heart the night everything happened with his brother, Gabe. Now I'm serving out my summer like a jail sentence: Just ninety-nine days till I can leave for college and be done.
Day 4: A nasty note on my windshield makes it clear Julia isn't finished. I'm expecting a fight when someone taps me on the shoulder, but it's just Gabe, home from college and actually happy to see me. "For what it's worth, Molly Barlow," he says, "I'm really glad you're back."
Day 12: Gabe wouldn't quit till he got me to come to this party, and I'm surprised to find I'm actually having fun. I think he's about to kiss me--and that's when I see Patrick. My Patrick, who's supposed to be clear across the country. My Patrick, who's never going to forgive me.
My thoughts:
99 Days gives you the feelings you get while watching The O.C. or Dawson's Creek... As a reader who reads at least one book per week, it's hard for me to always read heavy books, so I read some easier ones along the way. This has been one of them and came at the right time. Lately I've been sick of YA books with vampires, werewolves and the like, so some realistic fiction was just what I needed. The subject-matter of the book, on the other hand, is rather unusual. I sometimes wanted to slap the main character, Molly Barlow, and sometimes I wanted to give her a big hug.
Molly is sometimes naive, sometimes plain stupid and sometimes wise; I don't know if this is just how teens are these days, but it's obvious that Molly puts herself in some very tough situations. Mistake 1: She sleeps with her boyfriend's brother. Mistake 2: She talks about this with her mother. Her mother who's a writer. The writer mother writes a best-selling novel about the whole thing. In Molly's small town, everyone realized what's going on after reading the novel, which leads Molly to move far far away-- away from her mother, away from the sister of the brothers, who was her best friend once. But, of course, we all eventually come back home, don't we?
We meet Molly during the summer before college when she's back home. Of course, her relationship with her mother is quite estranged. People who used to be her friends aren't really acknowledging her. That's how we start the 99 days countdown. In the beginning, Molly doesn't even want to leave her house. Later, she decides she cannot just stay home all summer, so she goes out and finds a job. She starts renewing old friendships. And she makes a new group of friends at work. All of a sudden, even her ex-boyfriend Patrick and "the brother" Gabe are a part of her life. This might sound like a good thing, but Molly manages to mess it up!
Molly is normally the type of girl I can't stand-- the type of girl who doesn't know what she wants, can be pulled whichever direction and to whomever. She doesn't even know which one of the brothers she wants, and that's if she actually does want any of them. However, Katie Cotugno, I think, didn't even try to create a lovable character. I felt as if she was all "here's a girl going through the teenage girly things the teenage girl way."
