Rating: 
Summary: Not too Impressed
Review: Although I listened to this book on tape and did not read it I would have to say that I was not entirely impressed with this book. I found Carrie to be quite annoying most of the time. I know she was confused and seemed to be on this mission to find herself, but I had a hard time with the way that she seemed to treat the people in her life. Her mother and her best friend, whom she seems to really care about, she pretty much deserts for quite some time with no contact. The new relationship she makes she deserts to return home and try to bandage up the problems. I felt like I couldn't relate or understand the character at all. I myself went through a period of finding myself, but I didn't burn every bridge that I made along the way only to turn around and try to put out the fire. I guess I found this main character to be not only confused, but quite week.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Read.
Review: I enjoyed this book and raced through it and would highly recommend it. Ann Packer is an excellent writer and her descriptions of people, places and conversations are very true-to-life. However, I was completely frustrated by the fact that she never really described Carrie, except to say that she had dark hair. I think it's normal to try and envision the main character--relate him or her to someone you know or think about which celebrity would play this character in the movie version. However, I was never able to get a mental picture of Carrie, whereas Packer gives you so much detail about the other characters (Rooster, Jamie and Kilroy). Maybe the lack of description was intentional.Having gone to college in NYC, I loved the part of the book that took place there. Packer captures the excitement, the pace, and the "possibilities" that exist for young people living in NYC in a very realistic fashion. I could wholly relate to the melancholy Carrie felt over leaving NYC to return to the mid-west in realizing how bland and unexciting life in the midwest can be, while at the same time recognizing the beauty of the familiar. My main complaint about this book is that I felt like Packer spent way too much time passing Carrie off from one man to another. Carrie's journey of self-discovery should have been centered more on Carrie and less on her relationships with the men in her life. I agree with others who complained about the ending. It was like Carrie was on a path to do so many great things with her life, and then she sold out by coming home and doing what everyone else expected of her in the first place. The book left too many things unsaid and unresolved, but maybe that's what makes it such a good book...you are left to come to your own conclusions about what will happen. Packer gives the reader credit enough not to spell everything out, but to suggest what may happen. A good read. I was sad when it was over. That's the mark of a good book in my opinion.
Rating: 
Summary: Frustratingly engaging
Review: I wanted to like this book. The premise was interesting. The prose was nice. The dialogue pretty real.I even bought a few of the characters. I wanted to like it a lot. But that Carrie Bell was a real piece of work. The author's insistence on perpetuating the image of the Midwest as a vapid expanse of bland nothingness and by contrast, New York City as a cultural mecca so ripe with coolness that even tortured, emotionally detached losers are deep, is an insult to residents of both areas. Don't even get me started on the inexplicable arrival of the very trendy Gay Male Best Friend character... All that said, I did finish it. I found it interesting. And, glaring cliches aside, well written. Perhaps it was simply the Wisconsinite (NOT Wisconsonian) in me who just couldn't get over the insult of having being born and bred in the same state as that whiny, shallow Carrie Bell.
Rating: 
Summary: A great journey through Madison!
Review: I loved this book, especially for the great detail of my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin! Ann was true to detail in all the background ongoings while Carrie was in Madison. The story was engrossing and so human and I couldn't help but be empathetic to her situation. I envied how she just picked herself up and moved out to New York and tried to find out what she really wanted to do. I don't think I would have had her courage. I could not put this book down; I love very human and lifelike stories like these!
Rating:
Summary: Just So-So
Review: I started reading this book twice. The first time I did not really like it, then I let myself be talked into finishing it. And I still did not much like it. Actually, the first and third parts were okay. The middle, the part set in New York, was dreadful. It was way too long, too slow, and could have used a lot of editing. And for all the over-writing, the characters were not very well developed nor defined (except for Mike). I was so sick of Carrie by the time the section ended that I could have cared less what happened to her. While I understood why Carrie felt claustrophobic in Madison and why she had to leave the untenable situation there, I could not understand her fleeing to someone she barely knew. But even worse was the fact that she did not tell her mother or her best friend that she was going, nor did she call them for a long time afterwards. For all they knew, she could have been dead. This was very unrealistic, in my opinion. I could not stand the way Carrie just drifted while she was in New York, doing nothing-well, sometimes she whined! She even had to be "led" to the fashion design classes. Kilroy was a most unlikeable character and the silly sex scenes with he and Carrie were so badly written that I cringed. One newspaper review said that Carrie did not walk away, but moved forward. Well, I think she stayed stagnant. She was no more mature at the end of the book than she was at the beginning. And she had no personality whatsoever. Not a terrible book, but not equal to all the hoopla either. A good premise/plot poorly executed. I really had to force myself to finish it.
Rating:
Summary: At least I finished it . . .
Review: . . . and that says a lot. The Dive had enough substance to keep me turning the pages until the very end. I enjoyed reading how Carrie was finding her true self in NYC, in spite of the hovering guilt she was experiencing. With regards to the ending, the reader is supposed to think this is what Carrie ultimately wanted, however, this is difficult to swallow simply because of the way the story was heading. Then again, guilt is a powerful emotion . . .
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing
Review: This was a great story, but a very difficult read. Carrie Bell is Mike's high-school sweetheart, and now, having finished college, the obvious next step is marriage. Everyone expects it, and Carrie feels unsure and trapped as the book opens. Packer jumps right into the thick of the plot in the first chapter, when Mike suffers an injury in a freak accident diving from Claussen's Pier at a picnic. The accident renders Mike a quadroplaegic, and Carrie wondering what to do. Filled with guilt, desperately trying to meet everyone's expectations, Carrie eventually cracks and makes a midnight flight from Madison, WI to New York City in an effort to save herself. Ann Packer has tackled a very tough topic, and her resulting story is a realistic and heart-wrenching tale. Although at times I disagreed with the decisions the characters make at some points in the story, I thought the characters well-developed and very true to life. This book took some time to get through because I had to set it aside at times to regroup. But I definitely thought it was worth the effort. A tough but thought-provoking story.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Read!
Review: this is a great book and i highly recommend it. from the beginning i was completely engrossed! this book challenges you to dig deep down into your own heart and soul and decide what really is important in your life and what you only really "thought" was important in your life. the decision to live for your loved ones or to live for yourself. personally, i decided that living for my loved ones is also living for myself, but this is not true for everybody and i respect that as well. if you don't know where you stand on this issue you should read this book - it really helps to put "life" into perspective... i would also like to add that this was a deep but simple read and i really love ann packer's writing style. i wished the book would never end.
Rating:
Summary: Very Well Written!
Review: I really enjoyed this book,and would say it's perhaps one of the best novels I've ever read. This novel delved in very human feelings, choices to make, whether selfish or selfless. It's
one of these stories that makes you stop and reflect once you've finished. I loved this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Dumbed Down
Review: I just got back from my local book club, where 5 of us just spent the last two hours trying to make sense of this senseless mess!I agree with the reviewers who sited that the premise for this book was fresh and intruiging, but beyond that Ann Packard is perhaps by far the most painfully dull and cliched of writers. To review: we have Madison as the po-dunk capital of the world, New York is just dripping with beautifully tragic acid-tongued black-clad artists, we have the token gay man, who starts out interesting and instantly becomes the stereotypical queen, the passionate poet lesbian, the best friend from childhood..........yada-yada-yada. This book was PAINFUL. It could have been brilliant. Ann could have showed us the plight of the "good-girl" in Carrie's situation, she could of had Carrie find herself in NY and get a job in fashion and THEN go home to WI and come to terms with "the tragedy". But no. We get: Carrie screws people over that she "loves"in WI, Carrie screws people over that she "loves" in NY, Carrie returns to WI and HINTS at the end of the book that she will probably screw these same people over again in the future! And to think that one reviewer actually "couldn't wait" to see what lay ahead for Carrie Bell? Hey, I'll give it a stab for you...maybe Carrie could suddenly run off to L.A.next and take to drinking Venti Iced Soy Decaf Mocha Latte's, have sex immediately with an aspiring but emotionally unavailable screenwriter whose estranged parents own a major movie studio,drive around in a convertable BMW Roadster most of the time, get botox shots, and then leave just as suddenly to go home again, where she can move back in with her mom, drive Mike around in his handicap van, get together with "the whole gang" for burgers at their favorite burger joint,...and then oh, maybe she can get really excited about some luxurious, over-priced chiffon, that feels like vanilla pudding or something and she can make a naughty little apron to pack away with her nightgown and green dress, all the while still thinking of "one day......"! Yipee! Yucky!!!!!!!!!
| 
