The book featured a pretty diverse cast of characters and the secondary characters felt like real people, but overall, I think that this book fell into the sophomore slump trap.

I could go on! She was easily the most three-dimensional character in the book and deserves every good thing that has ever happened to her. Irene was complex, emotional, deserving, loving, kind.

(Quindlen also admits this character is one of her favorites that she’s ever written.) I am ride or die Team Irene, to be quite honest. However, this book did give me one of my new favorite characters in the YA canon, Irene Abraham. When it came time for the big feelings reveal, I didn’t feel like Scottie or the reader had earned it because we didn’t spend enough time with Irene or examining Scottie’s growing feelings for her. The pacing of this book was also all over the place the relationship between Scottie and Irene felt r ushed. The dialogue was almost always stilted or unrealistic, which led to the relationships between characters feeling forced and superficial. Something I thought Quindlen did really well in her debut was to capture how teenagers actually talk to one another. The book was a little bit of each, but lacked substance between those moments. In her acknowledgements at the end of the book, Quindlen calls the book “goofy, campy, ridiculous” all of which are true. While I enjoyed She Drives Me Crazy, I found it to be lacking a lot of the things that made me fall in love with Quindl en’s first novel. I was lucky enough to get ahold of an advanced reader copy of Quindlen’s sophomore novel, She Drives Me Crazy, which comes out later this month. Personal thoughts: In December, I reviewed Kelly Quindlen’s debut, Late to the Party, which I loved. Would I Recommend?: Yes, but it wouldn’t be my first choice Well-written/Editor Needed: Editor needed But when an opportunity arises for Scottie to get back at her toxic ex (and climb her school's social ladder), she bribes Irene into an elaborate fake-dating scheme that threatens to reveal some very real feelings.īook Format: eBook (also available in print and downloadable audiobook formats) Summary: After an embarrassing loss to her ex-girlfriend in their first basketball game of the season, seventeen-year-old Scottie Zajac gets into a fender bender with the worst possible person: her nemesis, Irene Abraham, head cheerleader for the Fighting Reindeer.

She drives me crazy book pages