Summer and the City

Gr 9 Up—This novel picks up where the first Sex and the City prequel, The Carrie Diaries (HarperCollins, 2010), leaves off. Carrie Bradshaw has left her hometown behind, prepared to spend the summer before her freshman year at Brown taking a writing class at The New School. Upon arriving in Manhattan, she meets Samantha Jones, a true New York woman who essentially adopts this little sparrow of a person and inducts her into the high life, including a relationship with a much older man, famous writer Bernard. While Carrie's dalliances with Bernard are not always believable, her newfound friendship with the opinionated feminist Miranda Hobbes is. Their conversations about the opposite sex, while more frank than those in most YA literature, are in turn honest, probing, and comical. In addition to introducing readers to well-known characters from the book and TV series, this title offers up compelling secondary plotlines. Carrie's writing peers accurately capture the breadth of a collegiate writing class, from students with raw talent to those whose work is purely derivative. While this book clearly has a built-in audience of adult readers and older teens who are fans of the show and Bushnell's adult books, there's also something here for anyone who has ever wished to build a fabulous new life and, especially, for aspiring writers.—Jennifer Barnes, Malden Public Library, MA