Review: Feeling Sorry for Celia by Jaclyn Moriarty

Rating (Out of 5): ~3.5

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

 

Amazon Synopsis:

Life is pretty complicated for Elizabeth Clarry. Her best friend Celia keeps disappearing, her absent father suddenly reappears, and her communication with her mother consists entirely of wacky notes left on the fridge. On top of everything else, because her English teacher wants to rekindle the "Joy of the Envelope," a Complete and Utter Stranger knows more about Elizabeth than anyone else.

But Elizabeth is on the verge of some major changes. She may lose her best friend, find a wonderful new friend, kiss the sexiest guy alive, and run in a marathon.
So much can happen in the time it takes to write a letter...

Review:

 

This was a pretty good book. I read this after reading the third book, The Year of Secret Assignments, which I really enjoyed. I read the third book, after reading a review of it, knowing that it wasn't the first in the series, because I couldn't find any of the others. I prefer reading things in order, and so it bothered me for a while, and I've since continued to read them correctly.

This one wasn't as good as the third one (which I won't talk too much about, since I'm probably going to review it later). The series is written in letters and in notes and those types of things instead of in third person or something, more like the person is talking to someone. (Including letters addressed to her from weird societies that are quite awesome.) It makes them very easy and fun to read. And this one wasn't any different.

This one's mostly about Elizabeth, with some things that are written to her. Her friend keeps running away, and she's making a new friend from a pen pal project. Plus there's a little bit of stuff with this guy from her school, and with her dad.

I liked Elizabeth, for the most part. And I liked the boy. And Christina, her pen pal, seemed cool. I think, also, though, that I enjoyed Moriarty's style of writing. She makes it all very fun to read, and where you just want to keep reading. And her new friend and the boy are fun. The one thing that bothered me most about the characters was that they all seemed so very immature. It's possible that this was mostly in Celia, and that it rubbed off on Elizabeth, but the rest of them seemed too immature, and not very smart. It made me think that Moriarty sees teenagers like this, which I didn't like, but I don't believe that that's true, because her characters from her other books are very different. So I guess it's only in this book, so that's good. I didn't like Celia much, either way, though.
And I feel like her parents should have been more active in her life, which is more of a personal thing than an problems with the author. And what her dad does is very not-cool. I did enjoy the notes her mother left her, but still.

I did enjoy this book, mostly. It's not as good as the third one, but it was still pretty good.