Review of Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch

Girls in Trucks
By Katie Crouch


From Goodreads:


Sarah Walters, the narrator of GIRLS IN TRUCKS, is a reluctant Camellia Society debutante. She has always felt ill-fitted to the rococo ways of Southern womanhood and family, and is anxious to shake the bonds of her youth. Still, she follows the traditional path laid out for her. This is Charleston, and in this beautiful, dark, segregated town, established rules and manners mean everything.

But as Sarah grows older, she finds that her Camellia lessons fail her, particularly as she goes to college, moves North, and navigates love and life in New York. There, Sarah and her group of displaced deb sisters try to define themselves within the realities of modern life. Heartbreak, addiction, disappointing jobs and death fail to live up to the hazy, happy future promised to them by their Camellia mothers and sisters.

When some unexpected bumps in the road--an unplanned birth, a family death--lead Sarah back home, she's forced to take another long look at the fading empire of her youth. It takes a strange turn of events to finally ground Sarah enough to make some serious choices. And only then does she realize that as much as she tried to deny it, where she comes from will always affect where she ends up. The motto of her girlhood cotillion society, "Once a Camellia, always a Camellia," may turn out to have more wisdom and pull to it than she ever could have guessed.


My Thoughts:


This was a pretty good book. I won't be saving it for the re-read shelf though. The author has a unique style of writing that just didn't flow naturally for me. The book is told from the point of view of Sarah Walters, but she does this in a story-telling manner, and so some of the stories overlap. There is some back and forth, and some stories don't completely wrap up. There are huge chunks of time that we don't get to hear about, and there are events that don't really resolve, we just have to make assumptions about how they turned out.


It wasn't so confusing that I couldn't follow it, but it wasn't always easy to string together. Some of the segments are told from a different point of view, but only a few. It turns out that one of these segments was published separately as a short story. Perhaps the other was initially intended as a short piece too? It just seemed forced to me to include them in this book as part of the otherwise first person narrative.


There are plenty of entertaining anecdotes, and some real southern ambiance. The novel is set in Charleston, SC and since I'm from the Upstate I'm pretty familiar with that area. I enjoyed the reading with that respect. As best I can tell it's set in the early 90s. It was fun and entertaining. There is a small town feel to the whole thing. Everyone knows everyone and even if you only barely met a character in the first 15 pages, you remember then when they are mentioned later on.


It was a light-hearted, quick read. It's perfect for a vacation read, and especially enjoyable for someone from the southern states! 3 cup rating!