Secure Charmed Thirds (Jessica Darling, #3) Curated By Megan McCafferty Accessible As Mobi

THIRDS, the third book in Megan McCaffertys bestselling series, introduces a more insightful and pensive, though not necessarily more likable, Jessica Darling, Diehard fans of the first two books will have trouble coming to terms with Jessicas growth, though personally I think its fantastic,

College is supposed to be better for Jessica Darling, After all, she has escaped Pineville to attend prestigious Columbia University in the greatest city in the world, and she is still with Marcus,

However, things are not as great as it seems, Jessica and Marcus relationship seems to hit the rocks, She still cant escape her high school joke of friends, even with new college friends, She has unsatisfying flings with several different guys, But worst of all, her parents wont help her pay for college,

How will Jessica even survive her college years, let alone come out a better person
Great book, Jessica has grown up a lot since the first book but still remains the same, She still makes some pretty bad choices but at least learns from them, Its a little weird to read the book and hear how Facebook was back in the day, The book showcases how people come in and out of our lives and that people are never truly gone, Looking forward to reading more, Dear Jessica,

You know what your problem is You are ungrateful and selfish, You mock people, they way they live, and the decisions they make, . . and then you hypocritically do, the. same. things. For instance, how many times did you mock Manda for her promiscuous behavior Do you think your behavior is any better And I love how you try to justify your ways.
Unfortunately, I'm not buying it, You're a spoiled brat without a clue, I feel no sympathy for you, I feel no pity for you, I thought, once upon a time, that we would be friends had we braved the waters of high school together, Now I know better.

One other thing: Your relationship with Marcus, is. dysfunctional. You both need some serious therapy before you should even remotely consider a relationship with each other,

The only thing that saves you from a one star rating Your humor, You still managed to entertain me at times, Alas, Jessica, I will see your series through, Why I don't know. The sadist in me It's really too bad that McCafferty decided to make such a mess of your life, Really, there were so many wonderful ways this series could have gone, Maybe you can redeem yourself in

Sincerely,
Jillian
Our Notso Darling Jessica is off to college, There's lots of touching stuff with her sister and her parents and Marcus and blah blah and if you liked the others, you'll like this one,

But what I really liked about this one is that it gave a really accurate picture of college life, There are a bunch of pissy reviews on Amazon of people who are obviously not in college about how Jessica changed to much and what happened and why didn't she stay in touch with blah blah blah.
. . but that's what happens when you go to college, You become a different person, You lose touch with the kids from high school, You become an adult gasp! I know!

I also like the little details thrown in of Britafiltered Vladimir and and Ali Gstyle "Respek", And even the talk about Facebook, Except McCafferty calls it THE Facebook, Ha.

Most of all, I loved that Jessica discovered early on that college is college and the college experience isn't unique to your university, The mindaltering life changing thoughts and experiences Every other college kid is having them too, I liked that she realized this early, I liked how it crushed her, Because that moment was just SO TRUE, And so rare in literature, Especially when the character is at the author's alma mater, which is the case here,

I also loved this bit of irony

"He's one of those shaggyhaired sideburned emos who owes a great debt to Conor Oberst as the champion for manchildren with ink on their hands and poetry in their heavy, heavy hearts.
"

Not only hilarious and true, but coming from the world's biggest Smiths and Morrisey fan, I mean, Morrissey has to be the FATHER of emo, and I don't think Jess realizes it,
i loved sloppy firsts and second helpings, charmed thirds notso.

mccafferty apparently has never met a plot device she didn't like, siigghh.

in the first two installments, jessica's life is metered out slowly in months, each month's end marked by a letter to hope, as in life, time flies in college and here the format alters, marking more the periods in between learning, poor hope gets ignored for huge chunks of time and the letters now are more based between marcus and jessica, jessica and her parents, or jessica and one of her myriad "flings".
. . it's too much. like high school deserves to be analyzed in agonizing detail, but not college and it's not that i loved the whole "letters to hope" bit, but the fact that she gets otherwise ignored for huge chunks of time speaks to the essential problem of this book: jessica's world is too determined by her own prideful isolation.
she creates situations that are selfdestructive, chooses in those moments to entertain the selfdestruction, acknowledges the limitations and imminent emotional dangers of these situations, and does them regardless.
hard to feel sorry for that sort of mentality, you know and i've had bad breaksups before, not an excuse to be an idiot,

next, the character of

marcus has been inexplicably changed, first he goes off to weirdobuddhist college, then, after jessica "cheats" on him with a heartdefective republican, he decides to take a vow of silence, sending jessica a series of oneword postcards, while he makes a quiet exit to "gay cowboy dancing camp" in death valley.
yeah, that's how it breaks down, i'm a huge marcus fan, this was inexcusable and sloppy,

at the heart of the matter, as with all the darling books thus far, the reason i read them is not just because i'm hoping for marcus and jessica to work out all their bullshit in the end although i am, even after this muddling installment it's the ring of truth in the Charmed Thirds's quieter moments.
i do feel, at times, that mccafferty has stumbled across old emails and letters of mine and has used them to shape her novel She didn't of course, her need to continually drag up plagiarist "hy" and her inability to develop her own ideas when jessica throws perfectly good ones at her repeatedly could be some psychological manifestation of the "sharing of ideas" gone horribly wrong in her own life.
. . regardless, it's uncanny at times, and it helps give me closure for moments for which i didn't even realize i needed some sense of finality, thanks for that.

minor characters appear and disappear too quickly here to be of any consequence, i wish there had been a little more finetuning in the final revisions of this book, . . oh, and a little more pepe, i love that kid. .