We Are Pirates

There was one person I liked in this whole book or at least I felt sympathy for him.

The others?

Honestly, they all could have drowned in the San Francisco Bay. I don’t always have to like characters in a book- Gone Girl comes to mind but at least in Gone Girl it felt right somehow and I could find things in the characters that I understood and related to. Gwen for instance is just a spoiled snotty little teenager. Her father? Just a disappointing man whose not happy with his life for no real reason. Ugh. Typing that I realized I really did like them less than Nick and Amy Dunne.

I must admit that I’ve never read Handler so maybe if I was more familiar with the author I would have been more prepared for the novel and despite my problems with it the story is very well written. Handler really brings the world to life.

Gwen is your typical teenager (I both admired the realism here and thought she was awful) she steals, she’s wants the wrong boy, she loses her best friend and meets another, she’s rude to her mother. She and her gang have a dream of ditching reality and becoming real life pirates. By gang there’s her new friend Amber, the poor old man she was punished into taking care of, the little brother of the boy she likes and an orderly at the old-folks home.

The other part of this story is her father Phil. He’s both pointless and somehow worse in my opinion. Mid-life crisis? Work crisis? Marriage crisis? Thinking to highly of yourself crisis? Pretty much checks them all off.

Yeah, this was not my type of book. Also despite having read the synopsis I was still not prepared for a pretty stunning act of violence perpetrated by the pirates. And the ending? Well, on top of all the characters being hateable I wasn’t thrilled with the what went down at the end.

My other question- I know the Bay is huge but would it really be that hard for the police and Coast Guard to find a missing boat that was apparently known as a tourist attraction anyway until stolen?

Recommend: I wouldn’t unless you really know what you’re getting into maybe try a sample chapter… I really have to start taking advantage of that feature!