So Jacaranda is a surfer girl. Blonde, curvy plump athletic, tanned, a painter. When the book opens she’s basically my friend Ollie’s dream girl. Then she gets much too dramatic for Ollie. Quite like in Eve’s memoir (the famous writer Eve, not the amateur book review writer eve) (I deserve to be un-capitalised), the book is a series of encounters with different lovers and friends, who change her life in some way. The most important are: Janet the editor who offers her small writing jobs and eventually a book deal (not a spoiler), Max the perfect smiling party host who comes back to haunt her (maybe a spoiler?), and a girl called Sunrise. Sunrise isn’t that impactful I just love her. Wait till you meet her she’s cool and interesting.

Those three are just great. Eve writes these relationships so casually. They just interact. But it’s like, Jacaranda’s life. And what captivating characters!  Eve is great at using stories to bring out the most essential parts of a character. It’s like she’ll describe one dinner scene and suddenly you just know what it would be like to know whoever-it-is, their flaws, guilty pleasures, relationship with their parents.

Jacaranda is fascinating, beautiful, impulsive, inconsistent, insecure, interested. Should have started with “i” adjectives it would have made for a better list. Like Intriguing? What’s a synonym for beautiful that starts with “i”? iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii don’t know.

Basically she’s a bit messy and I love it. It’s a book written in the third person, and I enjoyed seeing mess from the outside for once. Plus as you’ll see by the end of this email there’s an absolutely hateful protagonist coming up and Jacaranda is the good witch of the East in comparison. We’ll come back to that.

There’s this whole imagery about a lagoon which was great. Really made me think. Super full circle, this writer had a plan and knew what they were doing type thing.

I wish I had more to say, but as I mentioned, wasn’t exactly energised during my reading. And aside from my dog-eared phrases (some listed below), I don’t remember much.

• Jacaranda figures that any day now, she was going to start feeling that simple composure of normalcy that Jane Austen’s heroines always sought to maintain, the state described in those days as “countenance”, and later as “being cool”. 
  I know few people with Jane level countenance. Ambre’s school/uni friend David probably has it. I’ve known Carlotta to experience it in spring. I can only assume Kosi has it. I mean it’s not a disease I don’t know why I’m saying it like you can catch it. But if you can then I aim to catch it from Kosi.

• Jacaranda felt another urge, not the soft tiptoe of the three Bloody Marys, but an urge to “just call max and see if he’s in” – an ambivalent urge – the most irresistible kind.

• Up close in broad daylight, Jacaranda could see how each of Sunrise’s teeth was absorbed into the scallops of her healthy, childlike gums … Sunrise’s teeth were broad and scalloped at the bottom, they were big teeth to go with her enormous smile. Sunrise’s smile beat out daylight for first place. Oh, but Sunrise, Sunrise was flexible and light, not shatterable light.
  People often forget teeth as a descriptor. I think, my teeth are one of the most distinguishable things about me. For one they’re crooked because I have a jaw issue which means I couldn’t get braces. But mostly, I have two pretty big front teeth. Like my grandma. Scalloped too. It’s not flattering but there’s something nice about family members telling me I have these special areas that only I seem to have inherited from my grandma. Like the beaty spot on my right shoulder shared only by my mum and hers. I try to smile without teeth if I can avoid it. Especially when I was younger. If I was really happy though the real smile would come out, all weird and gross-looking. But I guess, nice.