The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants



I just bought and read the entire book in less than a day. It's one of those young teen books that I used to read voraciously in my younger, even nerdier years. The movie starts June 1 and I might just go see it by myself that day, if just for the beautiful views of Santorini.

So, the book is a pretty good one, a very fast read and somewhat predictable as most books of this genre are, but I really was interested in each of the girls' stories.

The books tells the stories of four girls and how they found a pair of magical pants that could fit each one of them perfectly, even though they are all obviously of different builds. They are all separated for the first time that summer and promise to take turns with the pants and send each other letters. The pants binds them together and gives each one courage in whatever she is doing that summer. This idea is great and all except for the fact that they NEVER washed the jeans! It was one of their sisterhood rules and that is the thing that most bugged me. The jeans ended up all over with dirt, blood, sweat, etc and that just grossed me out. =) And it was secondhand to begin with!

Anyways, briefly the four girls are:

Tibby : she's the only one staying at home in the summer, she decides to make a suckumentary and reluctantly becomes friends with Bailey, 12 yr old girl with leukemia, she's the one played by Joan of Arcadia star Amber Tamblyn

Bridget : she goes to soccer camp in Baja California, seriously tries to seduce Eric, a soccer coach there and fails, she's the tall blonde one played by Blake Lively

Carmen : she's the one who finds the pants, she's half Puerto Rican, goes to visit her dad but ends up being mad at her dad and his new wife and kids, she's played by Real Women Have Curves star America Ferrera

Lena : she's the beautiful one who goes to Greece to visit her grandparents, she gets to paint everyday in the gorgeous island of Santorini and falls in love with the Greek boy Kostos, she's played by Alexis Bledel of Gilmore Girls (Alexis, by the way, is not Greek and didn't bother to learn any Greek for the movie, on the other hand, I did learn some Greek from the book)

Because of the Greek in the book, I also found out the names of some of the food I ate at Kan Zaman a week and a half ago. Spanakopita is the spinach pastry that was sooo good and dolmades are the stuffed grape leaves that I couldn't figure out what was inside.

Anyhoo, I feel so old reading that book. All the girls are fifteen, I can't remember if I did anything that fun at fifteen or even fall in love. But overall, I liked the book, it was something to do during my break. Also, it made me want to travel so badly. Why didn't I have grandparents in cool places like a beautiful island?