Ariel Flack's "no comment" response to Fox News when the reporters bombard her with questions about her father's gambling addiction and losing everyone's money all around, brings Ariel's school year down the drain. Now that her parents are divorced, her father broke and claiming to be have stopped going to casinos, the Flack family are taking a two week long surprise bus tour--or so the tour guides say. Not too pleased about spending the summer away from her semi-boyfriend Dylan, she sends him postcards and vows to meet him in Wyoming where he works as a camp counselor, even if she has to pack her bags and run away with Andre--the only sane tour buddy--at the crack of dawn.
Catherine Clark has really improved since her Main Squeeze days with this book. It's witty, charming, humorous, and by far, this is my favorite of her's.
The postcard format is very inspiring. Really. The quotes--famous sayings, catch phrases, and slogans--are very catchy, and they almost make me want to run outside and spin the postcard rack to find a witty card that I can write lame stuff on. And it's really fitting for the story, since Ariel is on a road trip, so she's visiting all sorts of places. As a girl who's never gone further than Pennsylvania and hasn't brought a postcard since (possibly) eight years ago, the urge to follow the trend sounds almost silly. I'm "in the moment", I guess, which will pass in a couple of hours when I move on to my next book.
Even though this novel is finished, I still can't help but smile remembering it. Ariel's wit and humor will probably stay with me for quite a while, especially while I try to remember some of her famous lines. Let me try to find a few of those laugh-out-loud moments. Ah, here's one: "She's always saying this about my mother, which probably isn't that cool a quality in a mother-in-law. Or an ex-mother-in-law, which I guess would be a mother outlaw" (Clark 16). Hahahah. Okay. I'm too lazy to look for other stuff.