Girls in Trucks

I struggled to finish this, hoping the end would bring some glimmer of positive development in the character's life. Ugh, none. I felt like it was a total waste of my time.

The central character, Sarah Walters, grows up in Charleston and follows her family legacy by becoming a member of the Camellias debutante society. She learns the dances and attends the functions, but when it comes to the rules of etiquette, Sarah strays off the path. She is not the good cook and obedient wife her mother wishes her to be, and makes choices that go against everything she learned in debutante school. Sarah attends college in the North, and moves to NYC with a fellow Camellia. Sarah's job is far from the glamorous journalism career she imagined, her relationships fail, and she sleeps with men she does not care about to fill a void she does not care to explain even to herself. Before she knows it, Sarah is thirty-five, unmarried, and going nowhere fast. However, through it all, Sarah's roots lie in the Charleston debutante society she fought hard to escape, and her most long-lasting relationships are with the Camellias she thought she had nothing in common with. I thought Katie Crouch's Girls in Trucks was a delightful read - touching, complicated, a story many women could associate with. Sarah Walters was not a perfect character, but her faults made her more real, more believable, and I found myself rooting for her to finally find some peace and meaning in her life.

Enjoyed it immensely. A fascinating portrayal of a woman discovering herself. Raw and fearless writing - I found refreshing. Laughed out-loud at parts (which I rarely do). I recommend this book.

This book was perfect. I was enthralled and entertained from the title page to the last word. Katie Crouch's writing is truly next level. This is a book I will give as a gift, recommend to friends and read over and over again. As a poet, it is rare that I find prose that appeals to me the way "Girls in Trucks" did. The work is brilliant and accessible. In a word, it is perfect.

I really enjoyed this book. It was easy to relate to the characters (even as a man), yet I never tired of them. The author manages to mix laugh-out-loud humor with deeply poignant moments. Great tales of failed attempts at romance, struggles with family, and trying to find one's place in the world. An easy read, but far from fluff. All in all, a fabulous novel.

I LOVED this book. What a debut! Sarah Walters: hilarious, heart-broken, searching. She's just a beautiful, deep character. Her disappointments and her struggles and the solutions she finds are so intriguing. This book was addictive for me, partly because the writing is just fantastic (it has the two essential elements in fiction for me--humor and sadness) and partly because it is hard, I think, for any woman in America not to relate to some of this. It's like talking to my sister. What is Katie Crouch writing now? That's what I want to know. Clearly this is a writer we haven't seen the last of, not by a long shot.