Peace, Love and Baby Ducks Review

Whew, 1:47 in the morning and I'm wide awake. Finally finished PL&BD, after many renewals and fines for being due many moons ago... painted nails, removed polish, painted them again, am watching a whole marathon of Gilmore Girls (moment of silence in sadness of the end of a great thing... *sniffle*) Awww, how sweet are Luke and Lorelei together? I thought of the perfect song for them: Losing Streak by the Eels. LOL sorry, TV freak over here :P ANYways, enough of my personal life... let's review this book shall we?





Title: Peace, Love & Baby Ducks
Author: Lauren Myracle
Publisher: Dutton Books
MSRP (Hardback): $16.99 USA
Pages: 296 pp
Rating: * * */5

If I did halves in my system, this would be a three and a half. But since it's not, it's not worthy of a four so there you go :)

The general idea (courtesy of Amazon): Fifteen-year-old Carly has a problem—two, actually: her younger sister Anna’s new “real live Hooters-esque boobs.” While Carly was away getting self-actualized at a back-to-nature camp, Anna was busy turning into a hottie, a state that makes “granola-girl” Carly uncomfortably jealous. Now back in her privileged Atlanta suburb, Carly is struggling with feelings of insecurity as she tries to reconcile her newly acquired bohemian belief system with the incredible wealth in which she has been raised. In addition, her crush hardly notices her, she feels trapped between her rival best friends, and her parents seem to be growing more distant with each other by the day. Writing for an older teen audience, Myracle empathetically explores issues of socioeconomic class, sibling rivalry, and parental influence in Peace, Love and Baby Ducks.

This was actually a very good summer read. Carly, the main character, was multi-layered, there was the right amount of characters, *some* of the characters were also well developed, and I really liked some of the plot. It was really funny sometimes, and it was so absolutely believable! I loved the focus on sisterhood and friendship, too. But when it came to the romantic part of this book, I really wasn't impressed (more on that in a second)... :(

I did have a lot of problems with this book, though- like, when Carly first saw Cole at Holy Roller, the private high school she and her friend Peyton attend, and where Carly's sister Anna will be starting her freshman year- the cliches that arose made me so mad! "Head over heels"? "Falling and hard?" Inane stuff like that.

And as for the characters, they often came off the wrong way. I really liked Vonzelle- she was sweet and a good friend, funny and honest. But Anna? Anna was more like a spoiled baby. I really didn't like her throughout the whole book. And Carly, though she was supposed to seem real and different, beyond all the poor-little-rich-girl problems (another thing I had issues with!)- like, she loved disco, she wore stuff like dashikis, she laughed at people who weren't so extremely different like her. She just seemed like she was trying too hard to be different, and it was really annoyingly hypocritical when you think about her behavior throughout the book...

I also wish Roger would have been more developed. He was hardly in there, and he was REALLY important! However, the parts he was in were done fantastically.

Another thing is that the book delves a LOT deeper than the cover would lead you to believe. It deals with a lot of issues, like rascism, love, faith, beliefs, body image, and many other difficult issues. I really liked that- it dealt with them in just the right way.

But overall, it was an original, goofy read that really showed perfectly the dynamics of sisterhood. A great summer read.