Enjoyed but not as much as the others...

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

Enjoyed but not as much as the others...

Jessica stull makes the same witty observations and in this book tends to have deeper relationships with others (except Marcus) as she has matured. I would have liked to see more of a resolution in the outcome of Jessica's life then there was in the end. Maybe that is left for a 5th one?????

I would give it 10 if I could!

I know that this book isn't due out until August, but I had to comment/review on the wonderful job that Megan Mcafferty has done so far! I am looking forward to this book and have ever since I finished the last! Iam dying to get reaquainted with old characters and see if any new ones join! Who knows what could have happened on the cross country road trip that Jess set out on. Lets not forget that she left with Marcu's journals...who knows what could be instore for us. Plus there are wedding bands on the front... I know for sure that Megan wont let us down and this book will be just as good if not better than the previous three!

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Still Darling

This is the fourth (and imo, quite highly anticipated) book in the Jessica Darling series as it were known...home to some of the best books of teen angst and college angst alike, Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings, Charmed Thirds, and now, Fourth Comings.

These books come out a couple of years apart it seems - in part so McCafferty can make them VERY now...they are written attached to an actual date and time, with quite current language and pop culture references. If you've read the books before you'll know that they are written in diary format, with Jessica Darling, our cynical yet lovable heroine, ranting and jibing about the masses, and at times, even those close to her.

This brings us to the first big difference in this book - although it is in journal format, it spans two notebooks, that are written specifically to Marcus Flutie, Jessica's long-time on-again off-again love object. As Jessica points out by the end of the book, writing a journal to Marcus is far different than writing a journal for herself - she feels like she is acting out a role for Marcus rather than just being herself in writing the notebooks, and it shows most prominently in Jessica's continued reflections on events surrounding Marcus, or events he may not have been present for (which she wouldn't have needed to do had the journals been just for her).

A second big difference between this book and the past ones is the fact it does not span a year or two as the first 3 did (the third was Jessica's entire college life) but a simple, but action-packed week. That's not entirely fair though, as many of the conversations and thoughts Jessica has are flashbacks of conversations, moments, and memories that occured several weeks before where the story picks up, and in some cases, quite far back in Jessica's memory.

The plot is basically as follows...when we last saw Jessica, her and Marcus reunited just in time for Jessica to take off on a month-long cross-country road trip with her best friend, Hope. When the trip is derailed, Jessica returns to New York City to figure out the 'what next'. The book picks up six months after this point, and fills in the gaps along the way as to where Jessica is living and how she is trying to scrape a living and pay her student loans. The book opens with Jessica pondering the demise of her relationship with Marcus, to which he blindsides her with a marriage proposal and a week to think it over while he's out of town.

The rest of the book has Jessica meeting up with all sorts of familiar faces from her family members to her high school classmates to her college pals to some new faces as well...one of the most interesting aspects of the book is the fact Hope, Jessica's best friend, is now a real figure in Jessica's life again, so we get to see their relationship in action instead of in Jessica's lamenting and memories. Basically the book tries to answer that pending question...What now? in every aspect of Jessica's life from her role in her family to her career prospects to most importantly, this crazy marriage proposal from Marcus.

Overall I felt a tiny bit cheated that the book was just one week long...but within the context of the plot any longer and you would have been aggravated. As it is, McCafferty manages to stretch out Jessica's 7-day streak into a 300 page book. Despite my slight disappointment in the length of the plot's timeline, the story itself is beautifully written...the advantage McCafferty has by writing her story in diary format is that as Jessica's writing gets better and more mature, it probably reflects the leaps and bounds McCafferty's writing has taken as well. There is something more interesting, more reflective, and more relatable about Jessica this time around, a voice that realizes her cynicism is both an escape and a hinderence to pushing forward with her life.

I'm glad I bought this book...if only for the way it ended. I think there will be mixed reactions overall, but don't forget, a 5th & final Jessica Darling book is on the way in the next couple of years. A great, mature take on a character I've grown to love and relate to!

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Definitely not her best

As a long-time fan of the Jessica Darling series, I can confidently state that this is NOT Mccafferty's best installment so far. Yes, Jessica Darling is more snarky and irreverent as ever, and her uber-cynicism and keen wit leak onto nearly page of her journal. Yes, the writing is still fresh, engaging, and from time to time laugh-out-loud funny, teeming with entertaining satirical tidbits about, well, everything. However, I kind of wish Mccafferty would stop making pop-culture references up the wazoo and bring some more of one of the series' quirkiest, most loveable characters into the forefront--Marcus Flutie. While the journal that Jessica is keeping is supposedly addressed to her infamous Buddhist-lover Marcus Flutie, we really only SEE Marcus Flutie at the book's very beginning and very end--and then only in the briefest of dialogues and an ambiguous letter. As in the third book of the series, Mccafferty seems determined to keep Marcus' charming self hidden far the reach of the reader. The result is that Marcus becomes a shadowy, almost unknoweable character, whose mysterious persona leaves us wondering, "Who IS Marcus Flutie?" (which I realized, after reading the book's final pages, was probably the point).

Besides Marcus Flutie, I felt that I didn't really get to know any of her characters too well this time around--besides Jessica Darling, of course, given that this is her journal. The beautiful Bridget, for instance, barely makes an appearence, and even characters that I thought I would get to know more--like Hope, Jessica's bosom buddy--weren't nearly as three-dimensional as they could have been. Overall, the book is teeming with insanely colorful and at times bizarre characters--a drag queen, an on-again, off-again lesbian, a bipolar drama queen who pretends to be what she isn't--but I don't feel like any were particularly real or easy to connect with. Overall, I think Mccafferty's writing has matured in the sense that she is willing to be a little more ambiguous and leave the reader to do his or her part, too. However, I think this very ambiguity was stretched too thin, and we are left with characters who aren't very likeable simply because we don't really know them. In my opinion, this book is in need of a little more substance, and more than a little Marcus Flutie.

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

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