Becoming Carrie Bradshaw...Summer in the City: A Carrie Diaries Novel

I did not enjoy Candace Bushnell’s book: Sex and the City. It was a rare example of a book that was NOT better than the movie (or TV series in this case).  However, I am a huge Carrie Bradshaw fan, so when Bushnell began publishing a YA series about Carrie’s younger years I was willing to give her another try. This week I picked up the second book in the series: Summer and the City and finished it in one glorious sitting. The book detailed Carrie’s first summer living in NYC after her high school graduation and explained how she became friends with Samantha Jones and Miranda Hobbes. I enjoyed it, although I kept thinking that I should have written this book. Why didn’t I think of this?

The (slightly weird) truth is that I wish I was the fabulous Carrie Bradshaw rather than the ordinary Carey Ruscitto. I live in NY State, but I have only been to NYC twice: once on our senior class trip and once for a concert at Madison Square Gardens. I wish I would have had the courage to leave my small town for the big city. I wish I would have spent my first summer after graduation taking a writing class, shopping in vintage clothing shops and at the Strand bookstore, and going to fabulously exciting parties.

I wish all of this had eventually led me to writing my own column at my desk in front of my window in Carrie’s exact apartment, to a love affair with shoes, the NY Public Library and John Preston (AKA Mr. Big). Maybe someday I will at least travel to the city for my own private vacation in Carrie Bradshaw’s world…I long to do this, especially after reading Summer and the City and re-watching the Sex and the City movie for the 10^th plus time. The book was certainly not close to the caliber of the classics I have been reading, but it was a delightful light read!