Name: Body Surfing
Rating: 2.833333333333333 (6 reviews)
ISBN: 9780316067331

Anita Shreve

A Novel

Body Surfing

Lauren Grey

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Anita Shreve has fairly good reviews on her books and her name came up when I googled similar authors to Jodi Picoult. I can say that this book was nothing in comparison to a Picoult novel. I did not like it and will most likely not read another book by Shreve by choice. It was short, which isn’t that big of a deal, but I felt the characters were not well-developed, nor was the story. I wasn’t really sure she knew where she wanted to it go. The end was ambiguous and ridiculous.

After reading the snyopsis, I liked the whole idea of two brothers “battling” if you will over one girl for a summer while she lives with them and tutors their sister. The synopsis honestly described the first 50 pages, but the rest had nothing to do with it. The story took a turn and just went off the deep end. The brothers did not really “vie for her affections”… they go night surfing together (all three of them), then after that the oldest brother just backs off and the younger brother starts a relationship with her. Honestly it was plain stupid.

Another thing that bothered me was Shreve’s writing style. I wasn’t used to it, but the overuse of paragraphs was really messing with my head. After two sentences, she would begin a new paragraph. At one point there were five paragraphs on one page. That might not bother some people, but it really bugged me.

The characters had the most shallow and pointless conversations. Nothing meaningful or profound was ever said. I can’t even be sure what the plot or outcome of the story really was. I couldn’t really relate to the characters, but I didn’t feel for them either. The main character Sydney; I don’t know how I felt about her……

I would not recommend this book.

At the age of twenty-nine, Sydney has already been once divorced and once widowed. Trying to find her footing again, she has answered an advertisement to tutor the teenage daughter of a well-to-do couple as they spend a sultry summer in their oceanfront New Hampshire cottage. But when the Edwards' two grown sons, Ben and Jeff, arrive at the beach house, Sydney finds herself caught up in a destructive web of old tensions and bitter divisions. As the brothers vie for her affections, the fragile existence Sydney has rebuilt is threatened. With the subtle wit, lyrical language, and brilliant insight into real emotion that has led her to be called 'a supremely elegant anatomist of the human heart' (The Times), Shreve weaves a story about risk, family, and the supreme courage that it takes to love.

Carolina Poças

Um romance muito simples, próprio para ler nas férias.
É um romance que não tem ação e tem um final dececionante.

Struggling to start over again after being divorced and widowed while still in her twenties, Sydney tutors the daughter of a wealthy couple during a New Hampshire summer but finds herself caught up in a bitter family squabble involving her charge's two grown brothers. By the author of The Pilot's Wife.

Body Surfing A Novel

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