In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume

*Psst* Click the picture to find a copy

I had no idea what to expect when I picked this book up at Target. I was intrigued that Judy Blume had released a new title and I was drawn to the shiny "Signed First Edition" sticker that was plastered to the front. Having never read any of Judy Blume's most well-known books (I did read the Fudge series when I was nine), I figured it was time to give her a chance.

I am going to be completely honest that this book didn't captivate me like I thought it would. It was a good story and the characters were well-developed, but I found myself trudging through. Throughout the book I kept thinking how it deserved a solid three stars. AND THEN! I read the Author's Note and it alone earned the book a fourth star. So my advice (something I never thought I would say) is to turn to the back, read the Author's Note, and get a real understanding for the story. I thought this book was fiction, I went in blind, but in reality this is a historical fiction about events that Judy Blume lived through in her hometown Elizabeth, New Jersey.

The main character is a teenage girl named Miri. The book opens and closes with her character as an adult, but the majority of the book (everything except for maybe 50 pages) is a "flashback" to her life growing up in Elizabeth during the year that three planes crashed in her town. The book covers grief, loss, surviving tragedy and moving on. There's a lot of family drama, a few love interests and an interesting and accurate look at being a woman in the '50s.

At times I did become very annoyed with the way Miri was portrayed, mainly because at some points she acted like a small child and then other times only pages later she was portrayed as extremely mature. Maybe that's how all 15-year-old girls are, truly trapped between childhood and adulthood, but it just seemed to flip so much and her character lived in that strange gray area.

Overall, this book was interesting, has a ton of characters and just as many storylines to follow. I liked that all the characters were somehow connected and the storylines all intertwined at some point. It reminded me of Valentine's Day or New Year's Eve. Each character is presented on their own, but somehow they all have a common thread running between them.

In the Unlikely Event is definitely worthy of being a summer vacation book, a pool read, or an escape from the heat. Maybe pack it in your checked bag, though, reading about plane crashes on a plane makes me a little nervous. Or, you know, be a rebel and go for it. It's up to you!