Saturday, June 1, 2019

Wildfire #36 The Impossible Love and #37 Sing About Us

36. The Impossible Love, Arlene Hale, 1982

Jenny and Pam.  Sisters. 

Pam is gorgeous.  Jenny is "interesting looking."  Pam is popular.  Jenny has two close friends.  Pam has one boyfriend after another.  Jenny is sure no boy but faithful Thad will ever look twice at her.

Until Mark.  Mark comes to town, and Jenny is swept off her feet by the very sight of him.  But that's before Mark is swept off his feet by Pam.  

Sadly, Jenny watches them together—and dreams about herself and Mark.  But it’s an impossible dream... an impossible love... Or is it? 

Pam is a lot like Jessica Wakefield.

This is an excellent book.

37. Sing About Us, Winifred Madison, 1982

When Judy and her best friend, Tammie, make a foolish wish—for an exciting new boy to walk into their lives—Judy doesn't expect it to come true.

But it does!  The boy is Chip, a senior and a glamorous rock star.  Judy and Chip start spending every free moment together.  Judy even helps Chip write songs to perform. 

But the night of the Halloween Dance, when Tammie arrives in a belly dancer's costume, Chip can't take his eyes off her.  Just as fast as he fell for Judy, he falls for Tammie. 

Judy is crushed. She's lost Chip and she's angry at Tammie.  She feels alone and hurt and empty.  But she's still determined to make her senior year an exciting year...

The first 90 pages of this book are excruciating.  I found Chip to be so repulsive and couldn't stand Judy's obsession with him.  Judy even feeds Chip pieces of sandwich by placing them in his mouth.

And look at the photo cover!  Yuck.  Chip is gross.  In fact, he's far worse in the book than on the cover.  Chip speaks with an obnoxious fake cowboy dialect.  I cannot stand cowboy dialect in books.  Ugh.

Once Chip dumps Judy, the book becomes bearable.  Once both girls have been dumped by Chip, the book becomes good.  The good part starts on page 124, two-thirds of the way into the story.

When Tammie steals Chip from Judy, Judy thinks about shooting both of them.  Fortunately, she doesn't have a gun.  The possibility of Judy committing suicide is presented on page 103.  Judy thinks Tammie might have tried to commit suicide on page 124, and on page 125, she makes that suggestion to Tammie's father.  Yikes.  Judy is one intense girl.

This book is interesting in some ways, but it is also rather hard to read until towards the end.

No comments: