Book 54: What She Saw by Lucinda Rosenfeld

"What She Saw" by Lucinda Rosenfeld is a book that chronicles the sexual journey of a young girl named Phoebe coming of age.  It starts from he awareness of boys and travels though her awkward teen age years where she fumbles around until she comes into her own and discovers how to use her beauty to her advantage.  But ultimately the story is sad, as Phoebe knows how to manipulate her looks, but never really knows what she is looking for and how to find it.  She has a series of messed up relationships and feels hollow and lonely.

As I was reading, I could not help but see myself in Phoebe and how I was lost and looking for validation in sex and men.  I would guess there are many women who will see themselves in this book.  I noted that on Goodreads this book was categorized as a book for women in their 20's to read, I would not say it should be limited to that age group.  Women in their 40's will find this book nostalgic, as Phoebe's journey is mostly through the 90's and is a look back on her youth.  Hindsight is a good lens to read this book through.

I rated this book as a 3- The story was good, but I felt it could have been tighter.  Also, and this is just nit-picky, but it stood out to me and bugged me...The character name Phoebe does not seem like a real name for this character.  Why?  Who knows, but the name felt wrong to me.  Also the author like to put in big words, words that if you looked them up fit the sentence, but there are other words that could have been used that didn't sound as pretentious (again this is just something that stood out to me, I can look over it, but it did effect my rating of the book.)