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Certain Girls: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Jennifer Weiner
Publisher: Atria
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
Buy Used: $8.00
You Save: $18.95 (70%)
New (45) Used (66) Collectible (1) from $8.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  155 reviews
Sales Rank: 978
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3
ISBN: 0743294254
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780743294256
ASIN: 0743294254
Publication Date: April 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Readers fell in love with Cannie Shapiro, the smart, sharp-tongued, bighearted heroine of Good in Bed who found her happy ending after her mother came out of the closet, her father fell out of her life, and her ex-boyfriend started chronicling their ex-sex life in the pages of a national magazine.Now Cannie's back. After her debut novel -- a fictionalized (and highly sexualized) version of her life -- became an overnight bestseller, she dropped out of the public eye and turned to writing science fiction under a pseudonym. She's happily married to the tall, charming diet doctor Peter Krushelevansky and has settled into a life that she finds wonderfully predictable -- knitting in the front row of her daughter Joy's drama rehearsals, volunteering at the library, and taking over-forty yoga classes with her best friend Samantha. As preparations for Joy's bat mitzvah begin, everything seems right in Cannie's world. Then Joy discovers the novel Cannie wrote years before and suddenly finds herself faced with what she thinks is the truth about her own conception -- the story her mother hid from her all her life. When Peter surprises his wife by saying he wants to have a baby, the family is forced to reconsider its history, its future, and what it means to be truly happy. Radiantly funny and disarmingly tender, with Weiner's whip-smart dialogue and sharp observations of modern life, Certain Girls is an unforgettable story about love, loss, and the enduring bonds of family.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 150 more reviews...
 Another exquisite book; this time the story of Cannie Shapiro from Good in Bed continues... October 6, 2008
Cannie married Dr. Peter Krushelevansky after giving birth to her daughter Joy, whose father is Bruce, Cannie's dope head ex boyfriend.
The book is mostly about how Joy and Cannie interact as mother and daughter.
Joy is not an easy child, she was born ahead of time and has hearing problems so she has to wear hearing aids that she just hates to wear. She is insecure and is looking to be approved by the collest girl of her class. She wants to be treated as a grown up and make her own mistakes but Cannie is overprotective and tries to help her too much so they fight a lot and now that Joy will turn 13 and celebrate her bat mitzvah everything just blows apart and both mother and daughter will have to learn to live with each other since Peter dies of a heart attack leaving them all alone and with a baby on the way. They had opted for a surrogate mother to carry their child and now that peter is gone, Cannie and Joy will have to take care of the new family member and try to get along and accept their differences.
Weiner with her brilliant eye for character sketches and her natural art of storytelling makes her characters messy, lovable, funny, and smart.
Her warm heart makes her connect with her readers and we all empathize with her and her characters.
 A Beautiful Act of Insight September 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The only complaint I have about Certain Girls is how forgettable the title is. This book is not meant to be the same kind of book as Good in Bed. This is the book about what happens after Prince Charming comes along and the gorgeous child becomes a teenager. Jennifer Weiner does a stunning job of voicing the concerns of the mother: her love for her daughter, her inability to see her daughter accurately, her fears for her daughter, her personal and professional struggles, her faith, her fears--and the separate but equal concerns of her daughter: her love for her mother, her inability to see her mother accurately, her humorous and heart-twisting attempts to discover who her mother is, her struggles to be accepted at school, her need to assert herself, her personal struggles. As a mother and a daughter, I know how incomprehensible mothers and daughters can be to each other--how deeply intertwined the love and pain can be.
Reading the other reviews I wonder two things: first, if others who heard the story on CD/cassette (as I did) loved it more than those who read it. The reader is extraordinary. Second, if there is a correlation between the age of the readers and their ratings. Maybe you have to have been both daughter and mother-of-a-teenager to appreciate what Weiner has done here. Or maybe you just had to be ready for Weiner to be writing something different. I think it's her best book.
I missed the Shapiro's-a great addition to the family September 20, 2008
I love Jennifer Weiner's funny, flawed characters. I was so excited to see this book I bought it in hardback and proceeded to read it during the first week of summer break even with my kids out of school! I had missed Cannie and crew. I enjoyed catching up with her 13 years later, and again exploring family relationships this time with her in the role of a mother to a teenage girl. Weiner again is hilarious and poignent. I was sad when Certain Girls ended.
 A Time Waster September 15, 2008
Good in Bed was a total delight but this book would be better left under the covers. I was so excited to see that Jennifer Weiner had written another book but I failed to see what her message was. I kept reading hoping to arrive at it but it never came. It was the summer and I wanted something light but with meaning. This was not particularly well written nor did it provide a deep message to the reader. I felt that I had wasted my time I was sorry to say.
 Solid B September 14, 2008
Okay, like a lot of the other reviewers, I was kind of surprised at what happened to Cannie over the years, but I felt like I really started understanding what she was thinking about half-way through the book. Motherhood is a big change and it changes how you see yourself. You know, the whole "your life isn't yours anymore" thing. Still, the obsession with the bat mitzvah got so tiresome. And I didn't feel like the daughter's chapters really worked. It was sort of like Cannie-lite.
But the book still has a lot of funny moments and the ending will definitely leave you wondering. Pretty good, but not great.
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