The Darlings Are Forever by Melissa Kantor

Title: The Darlings Are Forever
Author: Melissa Kantor
Published: January 4, 2011 by Hyperion Books for Children
Pages: 336/Hardcover 
Overall: 3 out of 5
Source: Finished copy from publisher 


Summary: Jane, Victoria, and Natalya. Together, they are the Darlings. Best friends forever. They have matching necklaces, their own table at Ga Ga Noodle, and even a shared motto: May you always do what you’re afraid of doing.

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?

Review: This was such a cute and fun book! I love contemporary fiction, but it seems like there's a battle between the gritty emotional contemporary and the light and fun contemporary. While I'm a fan of both it's nice to sit back and relax with a fun books every now and again. 

Going into The Darlings Are Forever I was worried for two reasons. (1) There were three main characters and the chapters switched off on who it was about. (2) It was in third person. 

Now I don't have a problem with third person narration per se, but I usually have a harder time connecting with characters in a third person narrated novel. That was not the case here. I found each of the girls voice and personality completely separate and distinct so I had no trouble at all keeping the characters straight. 

I love the plot of this book. It's always scary going somewhere new, and being separated from your best friends only makes it worse. I think  Melissa did a wonderful job capturing the friendship between these three girls and made it very realistic and believable. 

Now let's talk about each character, shall we?

Jane: I could tell that she was the confident one who wasn't afraid of speaking her mind and going for what she wanted. She was a fun character to read because she always had big dreams and wasn't afraid to do what needed to be done to get them. I found the whole thing with Mr. Robbins kind of weird, but I was happy that she finally came to her senses. 

Victoria: She was definitely the nice girl who wasn't accustomed to a lot of attention (as noted by her reactions to the media). Something about her made her my favorite to read about. Maybe it was the fact that she wasn't very confident yet she still did the things that scared her and learned to deal with hard situations. 

Natalya: Natalya was possibly my least favorite character. She irked me throughout the whole novel. Now don't get me wrong, she was a great friend. I understand why she wanted to fit in with Morgan and her clique, but what annoyed me was that she knew they just wanted to be her friend to get close to Victoria yet she did nothing to stop them. If anything she tried harder to please them. Thankfully (like Jane) she came to her senses. 

Overall this was a very fun book. It had good believable characters who make mistakes just like everyone. I think it will be easy for a lot of girls to relate to the Darlings. The plot was great and well paced, and I was quite pleased to see there's a sequel, The Darlings In Love.