The Carrie Diaries - Candace Bushnell

I was seeking some light relief from some of the heavier reading I have been delving into lately so I picked up my recently purchased copy of The Carrie Diaries - supposedly a sneak peak into the world of teenage senior Carrie Bradshaw before she made the move to New York and became the fashionista we know today.

I am a huge fan of Sex and the City the tv show but I have to say that I have never actually read any of Bushnell's novels before - and if The Carrie Diaries is any indication of what to expect from her books I won't be picking up another one in the near future.

I actually didn't think the writing style itself was that bad - the structure of the book overall just came across as so juvenile, repetitive and senseless. I know the focus is on the character of Carrie as a teenager but I thought the book would be directed more towards adult readers - it clearly isn't. I would definitely place this book in the adolescent fiction section. I'm not trying to be negative about adolescent or young adult fiction either - I have read some amazing books in this category - but this isn't one of them. All the book seemed to focus on was Carrie's up and down relationship with a horrible boy - now I remember all too well how relationships can dominate your life a a teenager but the premise given by the author seemed to be saying that Carrie had so much more to be thinking about and working towards - such as the death of her mother and her dreams of a writing career - but I felt these concerns played a minor role and were never really explored in any depth.

The only thing I like about this book was the last line - this is where the book should have begun I think.

I will be going back to Sex and The City the tv show to reaffirm my faith in smart, sassy women and good writing!

One Fifth Avenue - Candace Bushnell

I have not read any of Candace Bushnell's books before although I am a huge fan of the TV Show, Sex and the City which was orginally based on one of her books. New York is also a place I would love to visit one day so I thought One Fifth Avenue would be a book I would most likely enjoy - and I did!

There are plenty of characters to keep you occupied and interested and each character is written distinctly and with a certain style and presence so I was always clear about what was happening to who and when which is something I sometimes struggle with when there are a lot of characters in a book.

A description of the book from Amazon:

From one of the most consistently astute and engaging social commentators of our day comes another look at the tough and tender women of New York City--this time, through the lens of where they live.
One Fifth Avenue, the Art Deco beauty towering over one of Manhattan's oldest and most historically hip neighborhoods, is a one-of-a-kind address, the sort of building you have to earn your way into--one way or another. For the women in Candace Bushnell's new novel, One Fifth Avenue, this edifice is essential to the lives they've carefully established--or hope to establish. From the hedge fund king's wife to the aging gossip columnist to the free-spirited actress (a recent refugee from L.A.), each person's game plan for a rich life comes together under the soaring roof of this landmark building.
Acutely observed and mercilessly witty, One Fifth Avenue is a modern-day story of old and new money, that same combustible mix that Edith Wharton mastered in her novels about New York's Gilded Age and F. Scott Fitzgerald illuminated in his Jazz Age tales. Many decades later, Bushnell's New Yorkers suffer the same passions as those fictional Manhattanites from eras past: They thirst for power, for social prominence, and for marriages that are successful--at least to the public eye. But Bushnell is an original, and One Fifth Avenue is so fresh that it reads as if sexual politics, real estate theft, and fortunes lost in a day have never happened before.
From Sex and the City through four successive novels, Bushnell has revealed a gift for tapping into the zeitgeist of any New York minute and, as one critic put it, staying uncannily "just the slightest bit ahead of the curve." And with each book, she has deepened her range, but with a light touch that makes her complex literary accomplishments look easy. Her stories progress so nimbly and ring so true that it can seem as if anyone might write them--when, in fact, no one writes novels quite like Candace Bushnell. Fortunately for us, with One Fifth Avenue, she has done it again.

The book was witty and sharply written - there were characters to hate, characters to feel sorry for and characters to relate to. Can't say that I particularly loved any of them but I loved the pacing of the story and the wrtiting. The ending was a little neat and disapointing but I can forgive that when the rest of the read was so enjoyable.