Full disclosure- I had NO IDEA who Marina Keegan was. This book just fit a book challenge prompt and I saw that one of my friends had it marked "To Read," so I decided to check it out. I only learned about her life and her accident in the book's introductions.

Now that I've finished reading...I'm hovering between a two- and a three-star rating. I'm really not sure how to best explain my thoughts on this book...

On one hand, I enjoyed the writing (specifically her stories which drew me in pretty well), but on the other hand I was quite a bit put off. As I was reading, I wished that a couple of her stories had gotten the chance to be full-length. But the non-fiction essays I found myself just skimming... Of course these stories and essays could have been refined/added to before publication if Marina had the time, but I found the angst to be just too much- whether it was in the stories or in her non-fiction work. Sections of her writing really bothered me, sections like:

"Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it: already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck."
Perhaps that came out more as a joke when she read the speech? But reading this, I was immediately annoyed. If some one told me I suck because I was on a good path, I would be pissed!

"I'm so jealous. Unthinkable jealousies, jealousies of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel I'm reading and the Oscar-winning movie I just saw. Why didn't I think to rewrite Mrs. Dalloway? I should have thought to chronicle a schizophrenic ballerina. It's in excusable. Everyone else is so successful and I hate them." Going through life being jealous over everything would certainly have been exhausting.

My favorite line from the book:
"We don't have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that's what I want in life."

In the end, would I recommend this book? Probably not. Would I re-read it? Definitely not.