39. Why Moms are Weird

Why Moms are Weird (Pamela Ribon, 2006)

I started this before bed with the intention of reading a chapter or two, but now it's 4am and I'm finished. I should know better; I can do the chapter-by-chapter routine with heavy, serious books, but not chick lit.

This has been on my list for a while. I was once a huge pamie.com reader, loved Pamie's Gilmore Girls recaps on TWoP, and laughed hysterically through her first novel, Why Girls Are Weird. (I have three words for you: tiny wooden hand.) Maybe my expectations were too high, but I didn't love this. Don't get me wrong, Pamie--er, Pamela--is an excellent writer. She's great at capturing what so many of us have thought or felt, only in a really beautiful and clear way. Like this:

I've been romanced, dumped, caressed, fondled, and destroyed in the confines of my car. It's the shell that protects me when the rest of the world can seem so infinite. When everything in love becomes too chaotic, I can take a man to the smallest place that can contain us, force him to look at me and tell me the truth.

Lovely, no? But wait. Benny, the protagonist, is achingly real. But I hated her family. Hated. I started to hate her for letting them treat her like crap over and over. Yeah, maybe that's real, too. Still, I thought the book was a downer. Not even the love interest, who was kind of an ass himself, kept me that interested. The alternate love interest was a total jackass and I was annoyed every time he entered a scene. I guess I was hoping for more ha-ha funny instead of mean funny. Huh.