Review: Rules for Saying Goodbye by Katherine Taylor.

Posted July 10, 2008 by Rowena in Reviews | 0 Comments

Grade: 4 out of 5

In the world of Kate Taylor, heroine of Rules for Saying Goodbye, pleasure and melancholy are close neighbors–like the summer hats and lobster boilers squashed together in the tiny closet of her Manhattan apartment. In this hilarious, bittersweet story, we follow young Kate from her girlhood in Fresno California, through a career at a chilly New England prep school, and on to life in Manhattan, where she finds a sometimes dissipated, sometimes glamorous life of fourteen-dollar cocktails, empty cupboards, and extravagantly unsuitable men.

In this witty and affecting debut, the real-life Katherine Taylor chronicles the moment when you stop waiting for things to happen, and go in search of them yourself.

I read this book while at work on my breaks and lunches and I read the blurb and thought it would be a good book but I wasn’t expecting to like the book as much as I did. I didn’t start out liking the book though. The book starts with Kate’s (which is a trip because the author and the main character in this book share the same name, though I’m under the impression that this is not a memoir or whatever) Mother telling her if she wants to be anything in this life, she’s got to get out of Fresno, California. What’s wrong with Fresno, California, I’d like to know but whatever, the Mom wants Kate out of this town to make sure that she makes something of herself so she sends her over to Boarding School in Massechusetts and so begins the story of one, Kate Taylor.

We see her go through the different phases in her life and we basically see Kate grow up from boarding schools to going to college and then after college when she travels from New York and Rome and every other place she goes to. We see her make mistakes after mistake and then we see her go back to where everything begins and starts putting the pieces of her life back together again.

I really enjoyed this book, it was one of those easy to fall into books, it’s one of those books that you have to read just one more page. For you romance readers out there, I’m sure that you guys will enjoy this book. It’s funny, quirky and somewhat depressing so it pulls at each of your emotions a little bit until you’re at the end and you’re happy with the way it all comes together. By the end, you’ll feel glad and happy for Kate and you’ll be glad you read it. Seriously, check it out.

What I enjoyed most about this book was the stuff that made me roll my eyes and the stuff that made my eyes just about pop out of my face. Like, 13 year old Boarding school girls doing cocaine? What? Seriously? I went to public school and none of the girls I went to school with were doing that stuff, all of us were still part of the D.A.R.E After school program to bother with drugs. So when I read that these girls were doing it and they were having cocktails with their grandmothers in New York, there was a lot of eye rolling but hey just because I couldn’t relate to it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen all over this world. Just in my day, it was unheard of.

Seeing Kate go through the different phases in her life made me roll my eyes a bit too but it also made me laugh a lot, it was definitely page turning material so I’m sure you guys will want to read this book.

This book is available from St. Martin’s Press. You can buy it here.