Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty ~ Jody Gehrman

Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty

Dial
(April, 17 2008)
256 Pages
$16.99 (hardcover)
Amazon

Triple Shot Betty is about Geena and her quest for the perfect summer with her best friend Amber and her cousin cum best friend Hero (their mother's liked Shakespeare just a wee bit). The only problem is that right away Hero (who's been away at boarding school) and Amber can't stand each other. Just like that Geena's dreams go out the window and she's stuck refereeing while they all work at the same teeny, tiny coffee shop and mourning her lost hours of girly bonding.

That's about all I can say about the book without giving away things that happen much, much later in the book except to maybe add that some boys (four or so) are thrown in the mix.

I've wanted to read this book for a while and ended up getting it at the library (my libraries have so few YA books t's an accomplishment) and I'm glad I did because I'm not sure I would buy this book. About 2/3 to 3/4 of the book if taken up by general tales of Geena's summer and for a long while I wondered if this was just going to be a mediocre tale of three girls' summer and the quest to solve their boy problems.

Then way into the book (I honestly think it was maybe 40 pages from the end?), the whole plot point mentioned on the jacket flap (not mentioning it here b/c I think it's kind of spoiler--check Amazon if you want to know it) showed up. At that point it seemed almost like that was thrown in to make this book have 'something' in the plot.

For me, this book just sort of...happened. It was an alright book but I felt like there could have been so much more to it and maybe some reworking would have done it well (like making more out/expanding the last 1/4 of the book or deciding to make it about Geena, Hero, & Amber and working that more). It felt like the book couldn't decide what story it was trying to tell so it half told two of them...

I, personally, wouldn't recommend this book but a lot of other people seemed to really like it, so you can find some of their reviews if you'd like.

5/10