Review: The sisterhood of traveling pants by Ann Brashares

4/5 stars

“Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday.”

​I went back and forth on how to rate this book. While I was reading it - it felt like a solid 4 star read. After I finished it - I was ready to give it 5 stars. But as the hours passed by I decided to drop it down to 3.5 because I didn't like how some of the things were handled. But in the end I did settled down on 4 stars.

Although if I am being completely honest with myself I think if I haven't watched the movie first (a few years back, and loved it so much) I wouldn't have been so into the book itself, as this is one of the very few cases where I think the movie was better than the book. 

“Time is what keeps things from happening all at once.”

Inexplicable! I know, but the movie really was good - it made me cry rivers. There were also many things that were being better handled in the movie.The most prominent one being Lena's storyline. The movie made it believable, while in the book it literally was the instal-love of all Insta-loves. They had no proper contact before, they barely knew each other and somehow - bam, she loves him so much.
Zero development - which irked me a lot, because Lena was my favorite character.

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“Lena was an introvert. She knew she had trouble connecting with people. She always felt like her looks were fake bait, seeming to offer a bridge to people, which she couldn't easily cross.”

I related to Lena a 100%. Super introverted - preferring solitude over pretty much anything, choosing paths that didn't have people walking on them, overthinking everything she wanted to say, mentally nudging herself to do things and get out of her comfort zone. But in the end always being there for her friends. 

“So far, she’d been her usual lame self: solitary and routine-loving, carefully avoiding any path that might lead to spontaneous human interaction."

I enjoyed other storylines very much as well. They were all so different, but together they represented life in all of its forms. Carmen with family troubles, Libby - coming face to face with loss, and Bridget - who lost so much, but was readily giving more. I loved them all.
But once again I did like the movie's way of handling Carmen's storyline a bit better - I just liked that all of the girls were there, with her, as opposing the book having her to fly solo for an important part of her development. 
On the contrary, Bridget's character was much better in the book - in the movie I didn't understand her motives and why she was the way she was. But the book cracked her insides very open and I loved that. 

I know that it might be very silly to compare a book to its movie so much, but in my defense I've never read a book that had a movie almost identical to each other. Usually movies make a lot of changes, and most of the time they are for worse, and not for the better - but in this case it was totally the opposite. 

​All in all I'd definitely recommend this book, as it's one of the best "coming of age stories" out there, in my opinion. The book is also filled with very memorable quotes and thoughts - and I really enjoyed that. Will definitely read the next one. 

“It was funny to hear her voice aloud. Her thoughts and perceptions usually existed so deep inside her, they rarely made it to the surface without a deliberate effort.”