When the friends begin freshman year at three different high schools in distant corners of New York City, they promise to live by their motto and stay as close as ever. The Darlings know they can get through anything as long as they have each other. But doing scary new things is a lot easier with your friends beside you. And now that the girls aren’t spending all their time together, everything they took for granted about their friendship starts to feel less certain. They can’t help but wonder, will they really be the Darlings forever?
What I learned: This is another teen book that focuses on friendships between girls and how they'll never change no matter what hardships happen. I didn't have the same kind of friendships as a teen, for whatever reason. I could blame it on going to a private school for sixth through eighth grades then going to the public high school where I didn't know too many people, or changing schools from fifth to sixth grade, from third to fourth grade, from the first half of third grade to the second half of third grade... it goes on. (Really. I went to a total of eight schools before college.) I'm sure that has something to do with it, but really, I just never had a group of close girlfriends or even one super close best friend. In different grades I had different best friends, but never one or two girls that I always spent the weekends with. Even now, I would say that I have a few "best" friends but none of them live in the same state as I do. I never really thought that I was missing out on anything: I had friends, of course. It's only been through books that I learned that apparently, close-knit friendships among girls is relatively common. The three girls in this book all end up going to different high schools and they go through some really rough times in their friendships, but they end up still being best friends. Perhaps it's due to my admitted laziness, but I found that changing schools meant the petering out of friendships (even when changing schools within the same town). It was all a matter of proximity. I think it's interesting to read about this type of friendship because it's something I never had, even though I don't miss it. Friendships can be awesome, but I also loved how this book explored some of the bad things that can happen in friendships (yes, even your best friends can peer pressure you).
If you've read The Darlings Are Forever, what did you learn?
No comments:
Post a Comment