The Dive From Clausen's Pier

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Summary: The Dive From Clausen's Pier
Review: I'm a teacher and I enjoy reading during my summer break.
I had to make myself finish it as I did not care what happenened to any of the characters.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: This coming-of-age and self-realization story is one that, unfortunately, did neither. While the author did a successful job of setting up a situation that made it possible for the main character to grow and expand, she (both the author and the character) seemed to grow tired of all that required effort. This resulted in a work that never seemed to attain its possibilities. The stylistic characteristics of the work were not enough to rescue it from this short-coming.

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Summary: Great summer vacation novel.
Review: I just got back from a vacation in Lake Tahoe where I read The Dive From Clausen's Pier. I thought that the premise for this story was so interesting and the characters were very unique. I was intrigued from the beginning, wondering what Carrie would do next in her search for her "self" and whether it would lead her back to her quadraplegic fiance.
Ann Packer is a very eloquent writer and I enjoyed her descriptive wording. I finished the story wondering what would happen in the life of Carrie Bell. Hopefully, Ann Packer will give us another glimpse into her life in the future with another story about her.

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Summary: Yawn
Review: Cry, cry, I don't like my boyfriend anymore. Cry, cry, he's now paralized and I'm supposed to be with him. Cry, cry, I want to sew. Cry, cry, I run off to NY to be with a guy I met once - so what if he's twice my age & doesn't tell me anything about himself. Cry, cry, my girlfiend's sister is hurt. Cry, cry, I come back and now my engagement ring can be a friendship ring.

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Summary: Very touching
Review: I loved this book. I'm generally a pretty predictable murder mystery/suspense fan, but have been branching out in my reading style lately. I really enjoyed this, which is hard to say because it's such a sad story, but I loved the voice it was written in and the choices the characters made were all very realistic. And you wanted to stick it out and see what happened. The ending was uplifting, too, so you don't leave the book thoroughly depressed.

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Summary: Introduces hope and then quashes it flat
Review: It seems the main question isn't just "how much do we owe people we love" (if it was, Kilroy should have been owed more than Mike), but "how much do we owe anyone, including people who treat us like [crud]?" (Mike's mother, for example - maybe she thinks it's justified, but she nonetheless treats Carrie about as good as an escaped convict.) At the start of the book, Carrie doesn't love Mike like she used to, but hasn't been able to tell him when he has an accident. Confused and unable to meet others' expectations, Carrie flees without a word to anyone from WI and goes to NY, which is where hope is introduced - Carrie makes new friends (Simon just feels like the right person for Carrie to trust; Lane seems right, too), falls in love, finds a way to pursue a dream - and then she leaves it all behind to return to WI - all of a sudden, "her life" is supposed to be in WI, even though she has been so happy in NY. It just didn't make sense to me that all of a sudden, everything in NY was reduced to not meaning as much as everything in WI had ceased to mean to her... and Carrie's longing for Kilroy right up to the end just made me angry with her and dissatisfied with her shallow ways of walking away from people only to decide she "owes" Jamie and Mike more than she owes herself.

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Summary: Plodding and dull.
Review: The premise of this novel really caught my attention, but there just isn't any substance. Mike is paralyzed after a dive into a reservoir, and Carrie, his fiance, is torn between doing the "right" thing or ending the relationship...which we find was in trouble before the accident. It is hard to care what she does after the plodding and lack luster beginning to the book. Carrie just seems to be devoid of personality and spunk. I was glad when she decided to run to NYC, and saw a bit of hope when she found her "calling". Unfortunately the end was as gloomy as the beginning.

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Summary: I could not put this book down.
Review: The writing was excellent and the story flowed easily throughout the book. It was fascinating from the first page to the last. Very well written and would highly reccomend this book; especially to anyone familiar with Madison!

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Summary: dive
Review: i just finished this book and i am a bit let down by the ending. it was such a great story, full of true to life complexity and hard choices. 'how much do we owe the people we love?' that is such a good question. and i felt like the main character was very easy to identify with and enjoy BECAUSE she doesn't always do the 'right' thing or know what she wants. she is trying to figure all of that out- what she wants out of life, how her past fits into who she is becoming, how to balance her old friends with new ones, how to be loyal to others and true to herself, how to break outside the predictable life that made her unhappy. i liked that it was hard for me, as a reader, to decide what i thought she should do. she makes mistakes along the way. you might say latching on to a new man is not the best move for this moment. although i saw this less about which man she chose to be with than which self she chose to be. it seems like she is still in the midst of this when the story ends. it leaves so much left to be explained- there is so much left for her to figure out and she doesn't seem to acknowledge that. there are many loose ends left untied- with people, with her unfulfilled fashion dreams. is this the first book in a series? other than feeling like i am left hanging, i absolutely loved the book. it drew me right in and i couldn't stop reading.

Rating:
Summary: Tiresome
Review: This book was a featured selection on Good Morning America which caused me to receive it as a gift. Having now slogged through it, I'm forced to conclude that [the] book club has been reborn on GMA. If The Dive is an example, GMA is making the same kind of selections...namely novels dealing with angst- and guilt-ridden women in excruciating detail while ignoring any semblance of good plot development.
There's a big market for books like The Dive. No doubt the same market that [some talkshows] target[s]. However, unless engaging in several hundred pages of handwringing and indecision with a protagonist is what you want, take a pass on this book.