Tully

It's well written and holds your interest but it is 10 years of teenage angst. In almost 600 pages and I'm not sure Tully learns very much.

I truly loved this book. I cancelled plans to stay home and read this book. I couldn't wait to finish it and devoured it as fast as I could but at the same time, as with all good books, I never wanted it to end! I was totally entranced with the characters. When I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about the characters throughout my day. I found myself telling the whole story day-by-day to my co-workers. I recommended it to my best friend and she was just as entranced as I. She kept telling me she couldn't get the story out of her head when she wasn't reading it! I loved Tully. Some other readers stated that she was pathetic and self-pitying and a witch. I loved the character so much because she is so human. She comes off as cold, but if you have any depth at all, you can see beneath that. A truly great novel about friendship and loss...about life and love.

This is one of my all time favorites that I just picked up again. It's an amazing, heartfelt story that seems to be at once personal and epic in its scope. TULLY is an intense work that has stayed with me through the years and is always a pleasure to revisit. Highly recommended--as is the rest of this author's impressive body of work.

Tully is one of those books that you believe is your own secret discovery, and then you realise that lots of other people have also been reading it and reacting in the same way as you...It's one of those books that you fall in love with, without knowing exactly why, and you return to it again and again. I've read Tully so far at least five times, especially certain parts of it...and I'm certain I'll read it again in the future.But why such a fuss over a first novel by an unknown american author? (whose two subsequent books, by the way, didn't even come close to Tully).One of the reasons I loved Tully was Tully herself: a one of a kind, special woman who grows up under horrible circumstances, but still learns how to survive, and even how to give and take love. A woman who got to me, for some reason, maybe just because she's tough and at the same time very vulnerable.Paullina Simmons wrote her heart out in this book. Especially the second part of the novel is exquisite: in it you'll find a powerful love story, not a soap-opera kind of love story, but a true to life description of people and feelings. People who have to make choices and have to live with their choices afterwards. People who learn that love isn't a moment but a whole process, and who learn, in time, to appreciate what's important. All in all, Tully is one of those books that'll take over your life for a couple of days. So chose a quiet weekend and read it.

I have read this book so many times I have lost count. Yet every time I am still carried away by the life of Tully Makker. I believe there is a part of every one in her, I know there is of me.

I picked up Tully at a book sale on a rainy day off work when I took salvage at my local shopping mall. I am an avid book worm and had come to realise that I couldn't remember the last time I actually sat down to read...and Tully brought me the reminder I needed of why I loved to lose myself in books. I got home from shopping, curled up on the couch with a cup of tea and didn't move for the next 8 hours when incidentally, I was reaching for the Kleenex.Tully takes you on an emotional rollercoaster of a ride that I think every woman can relate to at some point in her life - an alarmingly unhappy childhood, the loss of a best friend and the heartbreakingly delicacy of being in love with two men at the same time. Beautifully written and pieced together so intricately, I turned the pages and walked beside Tully as she battled with the insanity of trying to decipher life and conquering the lessons that we all have to learn at one point or another. This debut novel from Paulina Simons had me intrigued from the first line and kept me wrapped around it's little finger right to the closing word. I don't think I have, since reading that book, had my emotions wrung so completely. One minute my insides were screaming for Tully's pain while the next moment saw me positively glowing for the small victories she encountered in her battle to keep her head above water and not drown in the mediocracy of being "that girl" growing up in a small Kansas town. And when it seems that Tully finally has her life on track after such an unforgiving and violent upbringing, Jack comes home and brings with him the unbearable reminder that life was never meant to be easy...I gave this book to my best friend for Christmas that year and it has a primary position in my personal library for frequent reference. It has been my dream for as long as I can remember to be a writer and although I am only amateur now, I hope that one day I will be able to pen a story that will affect others the way Tully did to me.