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I picked up this book for two different reasons: to help prepare me for my son's upcoming teenage years, and to pre-read this book for a co-worker who is starting to have problems with her teenage daughter. What I got out of it sortof fit my purpose, but I ended up learning much more about myself, family dynamics and relationships than I had intended. Brad Sachs approaches some very "normal" subjects about teenage and adult lives and presents a perspective on them that is informative and straightforward and yet gentle and reassuring. This book is probably best for those parents who have teenage girls or for teenage girls to read themselves. I would guess it would be a starting point for some frank conversation, or at least some mutual understand of this tumultuous time.

I really enjoyed this book. I know some people have a hard time switching narrators and it's not usually my favorite device, but it worked for me in this sense. I enjoyed getting several different perspectives and seeing how they all came together at the end. I thought it was a really insightful look at what was going on at that time, although I don't know how true to live it is having not been exposed to the South really at any time, certainly not during the height of the Civil Rights movement. Definitely an eye opener, hopefully it will get people to learn more about what was going on at the time, including me.

Another book that I picked up at the library. It was in the car when I took my son to the ER, so I read several chapters that night. At first I liked it a lot. It's breeziness is welcome after the last couple books I read, which were very intense. But as I've gotten further into it, I find the light tone rather banal and the lack of linear progression rather aggravating. I hope she starts to get somewhere, because right now it's too much self-involved navel-gazing without enough wit, charm or humor. In the end it was a quick read and not bad, not a waste of time, but nothing special.