Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks by Lauren Myracle

Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks by Lauren Myracle

Published by Dutton Juvenile; May 14, 2009

Paperback, 289 pages

Borrowed from library
Wealth, privilege, and way too many pastel-tinted opinions...that's Carly's life. And guess what? It's. Getting. On. Her. Nerves.

Carly wants to be real, and she's always counted on her little sister, Anna, to lover her and support her—and tell her how right she is. But when Anna turns "hot" over the course of a single summer, everything goes weird. Suddenly Anna's swimming in the deep end with the big girls—while Carly watches, hurt, from the kiddie pool. And of course there are boys involved, complicating things as boys always do.

With warmth, insight, and an unparalleled gift for finding humor even in stormy situations, beloved author Lauren Myracle dives into the tumultuous waters of sisterhood and shows that even very different sisters can learn to help each other stay afloat.

- Description from Goodreads.com

Peace, Love and Baby Ducks is the first book I've picked up by Lauren Myracle and without a doubt, I will be checking out her other books. I was overwhelmed by how good this book was and while I had some troubles with it, it was still a very enjoyable experience.

I really liked reading about the sister dynamic between Carly and Anna. Their relationship felt real and I liked that. One of my favourite things in novels is families and I'm super happy I got to see that play out realistically in this book. 

Another thing that was a big PRO for me were Vonzelle and Roger. They were the absolute bomb and outshined everybody else. I loved reading about them and if I had a wish, it would be to have Rozelle as my real life friends. 

The writing was also incredibly funny and quirky. It felt in place with Carly's character and it was so nice to be able to get who Carly was right away. But although I liked how straightforward Carly's character was, I absolutely detested her for a good amount of the book. She was selfish and super thick. And while I'm happy she wasn't perfect, there was too little character development for me to appreciate her. I felt let down by the ending because it didn't seem to me that Carly had learned from her mistakes.

There were also some things in the book that seemed irrelevant to the story. Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks is a bit of a self-discovery story and honestly, I didn't see how the baby ducks contributed anything to that. Perhaps it was symbolic to the unification of Vonzelle, Anna, and Carly but while reading, I just thought it was superfluous and unnecessary (just like my redundancy right there).

All in all, Peace, Love and Baby Ducks was a fun and fast read. I'm certainly happy I picked it up. There were some great attributes to this book, including the way Lauren subtly weaselled in some interesting observations of our current Western society. I thought it was very well done and although I was left wanting more at the end, it was a great read.