Blog Tour: Virgins by Caryl Rivers

Virgins
written by Caryl Rivers          
published by Diversion Books

find it here: Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Goodreads

Why did I pick this book: Ms. Rivers is on tour with TLC Book Tours to promote the release of Virgins! Check out the tour schedule here. (I received a copy of this book for review purposes.)

Did I enjoy this book: Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this book. It was a struggle for me to continue reading it until I finished it. 

For me, Virgins wasn’t that funny. I thought it was okay but kind of boring. I just didn’t get it. I guess I was expecting something else going in to this book. I thought it would be more about the girls finding their place and trying to be who they were expected to be while being who they wanted to be. The characters just seemed really immature and overly sex-crazed to me.

Peggy was very childish. Con only had sex on her mind and acted way to grown up for her own good. I did get a sense for why she was the way she was given her home life. Her ending made me happy. I felt the most for Sean. He was expected to be a priest yet he always played second fiddle to his older brother. His father was rather overbearing and embarrassed Sean quite a bit during his final year of high school.

The end of Virgins was bittersweet. The last 30 pages showed somewhat of a change in the characters. Most grew up rather quickly and started to act more their age. 


Would I recommend it: I would not recommend this book. 

Will I read it again: I will not read this book again…I had a hard enough time getting through it the first time. 

About the book – from the publisher: For the seniors at Immaculate Heart High, hormones jousted with the quest for the State of Grace, and the hormones usually won.  The Map of Forbidden Sexual Delights extended its boundaries nightly in the back seats of tail-finned cars. But the girls of Virgins also wanted more. Who could they grow up to be in a word where women were supposed to be seen, but not heard?  They were rebels with a cause, before their time.

About the author: Caryl Rivers has been called “one of the brightest voices in contemporary fiction.” Her novel Virgins was an international critical success, published in the US, UK, Sweden, Germany and Japan. It was on many best seller lists and in paperback (Pocket Books) sold more than a million copies. Her novels deal with American women trying to find a foothold in a rapidly changing world. She was included in the book Feminists Who Changed America from the University of Illinois Press.

She is a nationally known author, journalist, media critic and professor of Journalism at Boston University. In 2007 she was awarded the Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for distinguished journalism. She is the author of four novels and nine works of non-fiction, all critically acclaimed. Her books have been selections of the Book of the Month Club, Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and Troll Book club. The Chicago Tribune says of her,  “Few other writers are as funny as she, and none funnier. Yet she is capable of wrenching your heart and soul.”  There are film offers in place for the new edition of Virgins.

Her articles have appeared in the New York Times magazine, Daily Beast, Huffington post, Salon, The Nation, Saturday Review, Ms., Mother Jones, Dissent, McCalls, Glamour,Redbook, Rolling Stone, Ladies Home Journal and many others. She writes frequent commentary for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribuneand Womensenews. Of her book Selling Anxiety: How the News Media Scare Women, Gloria Steinem says it “will save the sanity of media watchers enraged or bewildered by the distance between image and reality.”

She has co-authored four books with Dr. Rosalind Barnett, senior scientist at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis—the latest (2011) being The Truth About Girls and Boys: Confronting Toxic Stereotypes About Our Children. Articles based on the book won a Casey medal for distinguished journalism about children and families and a special citation from the National Education Writers association.

Find Ms. Rivers here: web, Goodreads