Review: Girls in pants by Ann Brashares

4.5/5 stars 

“You couldn't erase the past. You couldn't even change it. But sometimes life offered you the opportunity to put it right.”

I do not like young adult books much anymore, especially contemporary young adult, and especially young adult contemporary coming of age stories with romance (whew, that was a mouthful). And  The Sisterhood of Traveling Pants series is all of those things. And somehow I really enjoy it.  Girls in Pants is the 3rd book in the series, and so far my favorite one. I lost some faith in the book 2 (I didn't like it much), but book 3 came back and definitely brought it home for me. 

“She was still waiting for him to come back to her, even though he wasn't going to. She was still holding out for something that wasn't going to happen. She was good at waiting. That seemed like a sad thing to be good at.”

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If I was a teenager reading these books right now - they would be my holy grail of books. I can say that with a 100 percent certainty. But as I am not a teenager anymore, I just appreciate these books for what they are - a really good, proper young adult coming of age story. Young Adult genre, while skyrocketing in popularity over the last couple of years, definitely went downhill in quality of its content. A lot of ya contemporaries are very mainstream, "hip" (or whatever they are trying to be) and just not generally good (in my humble opinion). 

The Sisterhood of Traveling Pants is a classic of coming of age stories - it's relatable, it's real and it's very raw. Nobody in these books is perfect - adults or teens - both are flawed, both are guilty of doing wrong things. And I really love that. Nowadays it's teens vs parents, or parents are very often absent (I guess we have Disney to thank for a trend of "poor unfortunate orphans" that always somehow save the day. 

“Why does he have to be my boyfriend? Are you inferior if you don't have a boyfriend? Why does everybody have to be in love with somebody?”

​Girls in Pants is far from perfect, not just character wise, but plot wise too. I admit that it is too easy, too convenient, too happy even. But I (ever the critic of cliches and tropes) somehow am okay with it. There was plenty of heavy emotions to offset the cheesy- it was a pretty good balance. Being on a third book in this journey my only fear right now is for the series not to become horrible with the last books, because oh that is definitely a possibility. But, fingers crossed.

​I always try to say who was my favorite in each book, and I always gravitate towards Lena - I just really love her. And her story arc in this book was so, so good. And happy to say that I finally didn't hate Carmen or Tibby - both definitely evaluated themselves as characters in my eyes. Bee is always a solid number 2 for me, I love Bee. 

“Sometimes when she thought of Eric, and now more powerfully when she saw him, she felt some achy nostalgia for her old self. For the dauntless, daring soul she used to be. There were certain qualities you possessed carelessly. And you couldn't retrieve them when they were gone.”