Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close

Flap Copy from ARC: "... Close follows Isabella, Mary and Lauren as they struggle through those dizzying years of early adulthood. While everyone around them seems to be planning a wedding or basking in professional success, our protagonists are grappling with blind dates ("What about me says 'Set me up with an obese person?'"), chasing away ghosts from the past ("Bridget Carlson was the kind of friend you couldn't get rid of"), and learning that sometimes beauty is in the eye of the beholder ("Our friend Ellen dates ugly boys"). Through boozy family holidays, on-the-job flirtations, disastrous ski vacations, and hungover bridal showers, "Girls in White Dresses" pulls us deep inside the circle of these friends, perfectly capturing the wild frustrations and soaring joys of modern life."

I don't have much positive to say about this novel ... in fact my experience of the book was so different from that of so many other reviewers that I almost wonder if we didn't read the same book?! These girls, immersed as they are in the murky and bizarre period of life known as one's twenties, should have been funny, interesting and at the very least memorable. As it was, the individual characters were so bland that at times I had a hard time remembering which was which or whose story was whose. They had such low self-esteem and such stereotypical and offensive prejudices against friends and strangers alike that I just felt sorry for them, and for myself for bothering to continue to read. Where are the intelligent stories about strong, funny, realistic women? Why does so much 'chick-lit' have to be stupid? Argh. Don't waste your time on this one - I give it 1 star.