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The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls
by
I'm Adrienne Haus, survivor of a mother-daughter book club. Most of us didn't want to join. My mother signed me up because I was stuck at home all summer, with my knee in a brace. CeeCee's parents forced her to join after cancelling her Paris trip because she bashed up their car. The members of "The Unbearable Book Club," CeeCee, Jill, Wallis, and I, were all going into el
...more
Hardcover, 240 pages
Published
May 8th 2012
by Delacorte Books for Young Readers
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Start your review of The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls

This book starts off full of promise- it appears to be a rather mocking, more gritty version of the often maudlin "Traveling Pants" series as well as the even more saccharine Mother-Daughter Book Club series for younger readers. Four very different girls are thrown together by their mothers, who met in yoga class. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
The story is written by Adrienne, as an assignment for her Advanced Placement Literature class. She is 15 and frustrated by an injured knee and the lack of ...more
The story is written by Adrienne, as an assignment for her Advanced Placement Literature class. She is 15 and frustrated by an injured knee and the lack of ...more

When mothers who are taking a yoga class together, all have teenage girls the same age, decide to have a Mother-Daughter book club for the late summer.
Four girls, all different in personality and class structure " lightly bond" over the books and antics a youngster might experience during a summer around a poolclub.
I encourage you all to read this YA book. ...more
Four girls, all different in personality and class structure " lightly bond" over the books and antics a youngster might experience during a summer around a poolclub.
I encourage you all to read this YA book. ...more

I like the idea of this book more than the execution. I like all the literary references, especially for a big-time reader who reads this book. It's cool to recognize characters of other books when Adrienne remarks on them and inserts them into conversation and her narration. I was interested in reading this book the whole way through (Schmacher does a good job of the chapter endings that make you want to keep reading) but by the end I was kind of underwhelmed.
The characters promise to be more t ...more
The characters promise to be more t ...more

The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls is written in the form of a creative essay for an A.P. English class. Adrienne Haus is summarizing the reading list and therefore her summer, for her teacher. Each chapter begins with the definition of a literary term, but not the type of definition you would expect. Instead the definitions are snarky and witty, for example: “subplot—This is sort of like the plot’s younger brother, the one who tags along behind the big kids who are hogging all the to
...more

You guys, do not make the same mistake I did and be misled by this cover and summary: this is NOT a cute summer read. It's just not. I had expected it to be about girls bonding and forming genuine friendships while being in the book club and discovering everything wasn't so bad after all. Or something like it. I had expected it to be funny.
I was dead wrong.
The main character, Adrienne, is a bratty, whiny teenager. Seriously, I REALLY disliked her. I mean, sure she's hasn't had the best of luck ...more
I was dead wrong.
The main character, Adrienne, is a bratty, whiny teenager. Seriously, I REALLY disliked her. I mean, sure she's hasn't had the best of luck ...more

Adrienne is sure her summer is going to be a disaster. Instead of spending it on a wilderness canoe trip in Canada with her best friend, she’s stuck at home in West New Hope, Delaware with a knee injury. And if that isn’t bad enough, her mother is forcing her to be in a mother-daughter book club with girls she would never hang out with. CeeCee is popular and a bit of a spoiled, rich girl, Jill works at the pool and her mother thinks she doesn’t socialize enough, and Wallis is a sort of recluse w
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So if you don’t know already, I am doing the United States of YA Challenge from Epicreads. It really isn’t a challenge because all it is a list of one book that takes place in every state in the United States and this year I challenged myself to read every one of them. One of the books on the list was The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls by Julie Schumacher.
I was pleasantly surprised by this book! It wasn't what I expected it to be and it even had a plot twist that through me for a bit ...more
I was pleasantly surprised by this book! It wasn't what I expected it to be and it even had a plot twist that through me for a bit ...more

This book was interesting. I enjoyed the concept. I also enjoyed the format.
(view spoiler) ...more
(view spoiler) ...more

Teenagers being teenagers, with a high concentration on the pity party, no empathy moments. It was clever for the author to use the class assignment as a format for the book, though I’m not sure the chapters tied to their vocabulary word headings well enough to warrant a good grade on the assignment. The writing style was loose and gave personality to the main character. Unfortunately, stereotyped characters did what they do, and because there was no change in the characters, I didn’t really car
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Fun for booklovers/bookclubs! Hope there's a sequel (hint there might be: Adrienne's mom--a big fan of Jane Austen--suggests they read some of the latter's books, after the official club ends).
P.S. At least some of the girls in the book club have similarities to Austen heroines: Adrienne's mom tells her daughter she is like impressionable Catherine of NORTHANGER ABBEY. CeeCee shares qualities with EMMA "handsome, clever and rich" (not to mention manipulative), and Jill is adopted for reasons som ...more
P.S. At least some of the girls in the book club have similarities to Austen heroines: Adrienne's mom tells her daughter she is like impressionable Catherine of NORTHANGER ABBEY. CeeCee shares qualities with EMMA "handsome, clever and rich" (not to mention manipulative), and Jill is adopted for reasons som ...more

The opening chapters of this book really appealed to me, and, though I enjoyed the book as a whole, it definitely flagged as the book progressed. This is probably the least effectual book club ever that actually manages to meet up (my friends and I haven't even managed that yet...wah wah). Even so, every mention of a book club makes me desperately want to discuss literature in person. I loved the sections where they actually discussed the books, but these were unfortunately brief.
The main issue ...more
The main issue ...more

Minnesota author, Julie Schumacher, has written a Language Arts teacher's, a librarian's, and a female teen reader's dream book! "The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls" has garnered several positive professional reviews - and deservedly so (though now that I look at the goodreads reviews I see that the reviews are mixed - I will have to investigate this). I really liked "The Black Box" by Schumacher - but loved this even more!
The story concerns four teenage girls who are brought together ...more
The story concerns four teenage girls who are brought together ...more

Well, like many of the other reviewers, I was ready to be done with the book in the first 50 pages. But alas, the only thing that kept me reading was to find out who bit the dust at the end. The cover flap makes you think its going to be a funny lighthearted book, but as the first page suggests, the events to come changed the main characters life, and she was never the same, and yes, book clubs can kill you b/c someone ends up drowning in the end. So says the first page.
As I was finishing this b ...more
As I was finishing this b ...more

I lovelovelove this book!
“Thesis statement: Book clubs can kill you. (This essay ends with a person drowning. It turns out you don’t need much water for a person to drown.)…I want to apologize for some of the things you’ll read in this essay: they may not be appropriate for the assignment. In The Left Hand of Darkness Genly says, ‘I’ll make my report as if I told a story.’ That’s what I’m going to do. And I’ll explain how the books affected me – because whoever I was at the beginning of the sum ...more
“Thesis statement: Book clubs can kill you. (This essay ends with a person drowning. It turns out you don’t need much water for a person to drown.)…I want to apologize for some of the things you’ll read in this essay: they may not be appropriate for the assignment. In The Left Hand of Darkness Genly says, ‘I’ll make my report as if I told a story.’ That’s what I’m going to do. And I’ll explain how the books affected me – because whoever I was at the beginning of the sum ...more

Kill Your Darlings
If you aren't familiar with the phrase, allow me to share with you, Kill Your Darlings is a common writer's term which means as the God of the story, you have to be brutal but true with the story, sometimes that means killing a beloved character and sometimes it means cutting those parts of the story that do not;
1. Add to character development in a meaningful way, or
2. Advance the story.
The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls really needs more of this kind of brutality, ...more
If you aren't familiar with the phrase, allow me to share with you, Kill Your Darlings is a common writer's term which means as the God of the story, you have to be brutal but true with the story, sometimes that means killing a beloved character and sometimes it means cutting those parts of the story that do not;
1. Add to character development in a meaningful way, or
2. Advance the story.
The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls really needs more of this kind of brutality, ...more

When this book showed up on NetGalley, I grabbed it. But I left it on my Nook, debating if I wanted to read it or not. But I decided to read it-I've kind of been on a Contemporary kick lately and wanted another one. Immediately I was hooked. This book was just so much MORE than I could have hoped for!
The story starts with an assignment page for an 11th Grade AP English class. Adrienne Haus is the protagonist (to use some of her literary terms) and she is the voice of the novel. At the end of he ...more
The story starts with an assignment page for an 11th Grade AP English class. Adrienne Haus is the protagonist (to use some of her literary terms) and she is the voice of the novel. At the end of he ...more

This book would probably be best for teenage girls between 8th and 12th grade, but could also be used when teaching about what book clubs are and the benefits they have. When looking at the cover of this book I thought it would be a lighthearted book about teenage girls in a summer book club. The book wasn’t as lighthearted as I had originally hoped, but it still had some good qualities. I liked how relatable the four main girls were. Each was very different from the others, but had qualities th
...more

This story has a great premise with interesting characters, yet it falls flat. I was left turning pages looking for the rest of the story. Adrienne narrates this tale of four vastly different girls thrown together in a mother-daughter book club during the summer. A - as one of the girls calls her - has a single mom who is an English teacher. Jill is the only child of adoptive parents, CeeCee is the poor little rich girl woefully neglected by her parents, and Wallis is an enigma who actually want
...more

This book is so sad, so happy, it just.. URGH!! words cannot explain it. It made me cry, it made me laugh, and it made me angry (at some characters of course!). It is about these 4 girls, with different personalities and with different worlds. And they are basically forced by their parents to have a book club and read their summer reading books and talk about it, as a book club should do. But, more crazy problems come their way, and when I say crazy I mean CRAZY, like CRAY CRAY crazy. I totally
...more

May 09, 2012
PopcornReads - MkNoah
rated it
really liked it
Shelves:
children-s-books,
family,
fiction,
tween,
young-adult,
ya,
teen,
relationships,
julie-schumacher,
coming-of-age
When I saw the title for Julie Schumacher’s new YA novel, I couldn’t imagine a book club being unbearable – at least not at first. Then I read the publisher’s brief description and cracked up. Yep, I thought, that could definitely become unbearable very quickly. A bit of trivia: If you read The Body Is Water, Ms. Schumacher’s first novel, the character Jane Haus in that novel is the mom sixteen years later in this novel. Read the rest of my review at http://popcornreads.com/?p=3840.
...more

charming and funny-a collection of types, the overachieving adopted from Asia girl, the mean rich girl, the follower with no self confidence and the mysterious and weird genius read the classics, with their mothers Read this one on the plane. Toward the end of the flight the teen boy sitting next to me asked me what I was reading, he'd been reading over my shoulder and liked it.
...more

This book was.... OK, I guess. The plot was nothing special, and the final big plot twist.... Kinda anti-climatic. What I did like was the main character's sarcasm and her description of literary devices-were pretty amusing.
All in all, though, the book was pretty mediocre. ...more
All in all, though, the book was pretty mediocre. ...more

I recently read The Inbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls and since this is literally the second review I’ve ever written I’m just going to give a regular person review that’s a little short but gives the average person all the information they need.
So the basic plot is, there are these four girls who for some reason or another join this mother-daughter book club. They all think it’s stupid except for one girl who’s just there because she likes to read. They have a few meetings over the summ ...more
So the basic plot is, there are these four girls who for some reason or another join this mother-daughter book club. They all think it’s stupid except for one girl who’s just there because she likes to read. They have a few meetings over the summ ...more

Was not a fan. Before I get into the negatives, I will say the one positive I had about the book. I liked how each chapter was based on a literary term. I also got a couple book recommendations from it.
Overall, I did not enjoy it. It had promise but didn't fulfill. I kept reading because I wanted to know what was going to happen. I didn't like the writing or the the two main girls. There wasn't much character development either. The character "creating" wasn't good either. You were introduced t ...more
Overall, I did not enjoy it. It had promise but didn't fulfill. I kept reading because I wanted to know what was going to happen. I didn't like the writing or the the two main girls. There wasn't much character development either. The character "creating" wasn't good either. You were introduced t ...more

This was a good book. Good, not great, because the ending made me feel empty, as if there should have been more... perhaps something less anti-climatic?
Four girls in a fictional Delaware town are thrown together for the summer, thanks to their mothers' 'bright idea', to form a book club. These four girls are so different, they hardly can stand to be around each other. However, they manage.
I'm still left wondering if CeeCee was just a jerk who needed a good scolding? Were Wallis and her mother r ...more
Four girls in a fictional Delaware town are thrown together for the summer, thanks to their mothers' 'bright idea', to form a book club. These four girls are so different, they hardly can stand to be around each other. However, they manage.
I'm still left wondering if CeeCee was just a jerk who needed a good scolding? Were Wallis and her mother r ...more

The title of this book reeled me in, and I was not disappointed!
The format of the novel was a bit strange- an essay for AP English summer reading done in the form of personal experiences with the literary terms and personal experiences of the teem reading the novels.
I really loved the flow of the book. The teen rebellion and angst jived well with the funky format. All of the 4 main teen characters were very interesting and unique. Throwing them into a book club that 3 don't want to be in led t ...more
The format of the novel was a bit strange- an essay for AP English summer reading done in the form of personal experiences with the literary terms and personal experiences of the teem reading the novels.
I really loved the flow of the book. The teen rebellion and angst jived well with the funky format. All of the 4 main teen characters were very interesting and unique. Throwing them into a book club that 3 don't want to be in led t ...more
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JULIE SCHUMACHER grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, and graduated from Oberlin College and Cornell University, where she earned her MFA. Her first novel, The Body Is Water, was published by Soho Press in 1995 and was an ALA Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her 2014 novel, Dear Committee Members, won the Thurber Prize for American Humor; she is the first woman to h
...more
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