not worse, just different.

books:


	• Fourth Comings: A Novel (Jessica Darling) Megan Mccafferty Crown, 2007 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 29 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Poor Jess

I just want Jess to be happy. We all have a love in our past that we question...Did we let them go too soon??? Not soon enough??? I didn't want Jess to get married at 22 but I also loved her when she was with Marcus. What is to become of Jess???? Guess I'll have to wait for Final Fifths..LOL

Five Stars

My copy is already tattered. I folded down one page corner where Mccafferty wrote something brilliantly hilarious...then another. Then another...

Jessica Darling is as real a character as you can find in fiction. I'll be waiting in suspense to see what transpires in Book #5....

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Underwhelmed

After reading the disappointment that was "Charmed Thirds," I wasn't sure what to expect of Fourth Comings. Did I want to subject myself to another potentially disappointing book that would further mar the Jessica Darling I so loved when I was in high school?

In the end I decided to buy the book, because at the end of the day, despite the previous installment, I still love Jessica Darling.

However, this book was more than a little dull. Despite taking place in the span of a week, the plot was sometimes slow and hard to read. I found myself skimming through more than just a couple pages, wishing that Jessica (or, I guess, Megan McCafferty) would once again find the style of writing that made Jessica such an important part of my literary world a few years ago. I was unsatisfied with the conclusion of the book, the open-ended way the author left it. I was hoping that this would be the final installment in the Jessica Darling series, but was surprised to learn that McCafferty is writing a fifth book.

I think it's time for McCafferty to let Jessica go. I just wish that she had done so after the second novel.

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not worse, just different.

Having read the first installment in the Jessica Darling series, Sloppy Firsts, when I was only 12, I feel that I have literally grown up with the books, and I identify strongly with Jessica's journey into adulthood. I devoured Second Helpings, which ended on a perfect note and could well have been the end of the story, and Charmed Thirds, which jarred me a bit with its format (chronicling only Jessica's breaks during college rather than her day-to-day trials and tribulations) but impressed me with its intelligent and realistic depiction of Jessica's evolving relationship with the love of her life (or not?), Marcus Flutie. It was clear in the third installment that my beloved characters were growing up. In choosing to deal with such an age span-- 15 to, so far, 23-- Megan McCafferty has preordained that her books will vary drastically in content and style. Still, Fourth Comings came as a surprise to me.

The fourth book's format is even more experimental than that of the third: the entire novel chronicles only one week of Jessica's life. In addition, this time her snarky observations and poignant musings are addressed to Marcus, whose shocking, nontraditional marriage proposal she is neurotically mulling over. She explores her relationship with her best friend Hope, with whom she now shares an apartment, and as a long-time reader I appreciated the fleshing out of this very important secondary character. Jessica's and Hope's friendship, only communicated via letters in the former three books, rings absolutely true in the fourth. Readers are also briefed on the chic mommyhood alternately enjoyed and endured by Jessica's sister Bethany, as well as the relationship between Jessica's aging parents. Indeed, the book is made up predominantly of lengthy reflections rather than transcriptions of events, simply because, well, how much can actually happen in one week? This didn't bother me for the most part; Jessica's rants, however cynical, are always entertaining, honest, and somehow vulnerable. But-- I felt that, for all the hard work she put into Jessica's week-long meditation on life, love, and the pursuit of okayness, McCafferty might have crafted a more satisfying ending. Open-endedness is always tricky, especially when one's audience is comprised largely of "happy ever after"-craving adolescents; the ending of Fourth Comings feels a bit like a cop-out on the author's part, a neatly ambiguous path to a fifth and final installment. I agree with one of the former reviewers, that the resolution (or lack thereof) of Jessica's relationship with Marcus is incongruous with the quirky yet committed, loving relationship portrayed so brilliantly in the first three books. Marcus's final letter to Jessica feels devoid of warmth-- we recognize no trace of the impish, theatrical heartthrob we've come to love, and Jessica's reasons for her ultimate decision on the matter don't feel sound enough to negate the ardent passion with which she's loved Marcus for so long.

This books has its strong points, the most impressive of which may be McCafferty's skillful, convincing aging of Jessica. Through an ever-broadening vocabulary, increasingly frank sexual description and more complex, thoughtful reflections, McCafferty has transformed Jessica from a sardonically funny but sheltered high schooler into a believably overwhelmed (or is it underwhelmed?) college grad. Though some may fault Fourth Comings for its departure from the sweet modesty of its predecessors, devoted readers will realize that this departure is necessary if we are to believe that Jessica has matured.

I closed this book feeling on the verge of tears. On the one hand, it is a sweet rush of a novel, chock-full of all the witty plays on words and multifaceted characters the series is known for, and on the other hand, it is an apparent ending to the relationship which has always endeared me most to the series-- Jessica's and Marcus'. Still, any disappointment or sense of being let down I felt at the close of this book only intensified my anxiety for the fifth and final to arrive.

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6

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