TBR Bookcase Read: Summer and the City

I can’t resist a Sex and the City novel, even if it doesn’t always deliver as well as the TV show did.  Candace Bushnell’s second Carrie Diaries book, Summer and the City, takes us back to Carrie’s arrival in the Big Apple, the summer after high school, where she first meets “the girls”. Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte. 

 

With a dream to become a writer, Carrie Bradshaw moves to New York City for the summer before heading off to college.  She has a spot in a prestigious writing program and hopes to make the most of it.  But the city is not all it’s cracked up to be.  The tiny boardinghouse she’s staying at has too many rules and too little privacy.  Thankfully she has an introduction to a classmates cousin, Samantha Jones, who lets Carrie crash at hers while Carrie explores what the city has on offer.

 

One of those “offers” is a much older playwright Carrie falls for and who inspires her to write plays too, only he’s so wrapped up in his own life and career, Carrie becomes little more than a convenient diversion.  The roots of 30-something Sex and the City Carrie with her questionable choice in men are well and truly sown.

 

While exploring the city, Carrie meets Miranda, a feisty social justice protestor, man-hater, and social misfit.  Not too far from the Miranda we come to know and love in the TV series.  Although the three women bump along together, their lives slowly but surely intersecting, they are far from the close-knit group of 30-something women they will later become, and here for me, lies the weaknesses of the Carrie Diaries series.

 

While I love the idea of reading about how these four women met and became friends, the young adult Carrie is super annoying, as she waffles around trying to figure out her life.  Man-hater Miranda has more rough edges than a brillo pad, and her doom and gloom outlook on love and life left me cold.  Successful Samantha, on the other hand, already climbing the PR corporate ladder, with designs on becoming the next Classic 6 housewife on the Upper East Side, was a surprisingly realistic portrayal of a woman I’d really like to get to know better.  She was unfortunately a minor character in the book, and her scenes left me wanting more … more Samantha and less Carrie and her angst.  With luck there will be another Carrie Diaries installment, one in which Samantha breathes new life into the other characters.

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L