Here's my first attempt at a book review. Be nice.

The Dive From Clausen’s Pier

My library copy of The Dive From Clausen’s Pier came with a bright sticker stamped loudly with ‘Good Morning America’and ‘Read This!’. Ouch.

Carrie Bell, recently out of college, needs to grow up faster than she can imagine. Her relationship with high school sweetheart Mike Mayer (the Mr Congeniality type) is stagnating but before she does anything about but drop not-so-subtle hints, he dives into shallow water and fractures his spine, leaving him a quadriplegic.

Carrie doesn’t know how to cope with this tragedy and she ups and leaves for New York City. For a new life, far away from the sleepy town of Madison, Wisconsin.

There she meets the mysterious, sardonic Kilroy. He consumes her, yet she doesn’t know anything about him. Not even how he got his nickname.

It is also in New York that she begins to take design lessons. It all seems to bode well for her. She is happy with Kilroy, though the relationship is mostly under his terms and the design classes seem to be pushing Carrie in the right direction.

Yet after this glimpse of a fulfilling future, Packer sends Carrie scurrying back to Madison.

Are we meant to approve of her decision to return?

Packer tends to get caught up in weird descriptions, for example: ‘I crossed my room and sat on the futon. My legs jutted out in a way that reminded me of the dead witch’s legs in The Wizard Of Oz, sticking out from under the crushing weight of Dorothy’s house’.

And Carrie isn’t exactly a sympathetic character. She’s rather shallow and self-absorbed. She doesn’t know what she wants, although it’s staring her right in her face (Use the sewing machine, Carrie! Be a designer!! The though kept screaming from me, not matter how not obvious it was to her)