This week I’m going to try to catch up on book reviews I should have already written, so naturally I’m going to start with the book I just finished yesterday. I’m not completely sure what caused me to pick this up beyond amusement at the title and the lovely pink stained edges; I feel like there was something else but it was a while ago.

Girl Dinner is a flawed book in a lot of ways; the middle is kinda flabby, the end comes out of nowhere unless I seriously missed something, and a lot of the time the characters, either being academics or literal sophomores, have their heads firmly implanted in their asses. There is a lot of navel-gazing in this book, to mix metaphors, and it gets tedious sometimes.

But despite that, fundamentally the book works, and I need somebody else to read it and talk about it with me. The book is a satire– mostly, at least– and explores the intersection of academic feminism, modern femininity, social media and Greek (specifically sorority) culture, with just the tiniest little squirt of the supernatural over it all for, y’know, flavor. The two main characters are the aforementioned sophomore girl who is rushing one of the most exclusive sororities on campus, and an exhausted adjunct professor with an eighteen-month-old and a husband who isn’t worth much. The characters’ stories start off entirely separate other than that they share the same university, but by the end of the book everything knits itself together really nicely, at least up until the wait, what? that happens on the last page.

I handed this four stars; I wouldn’t be too pressed if you gave it three, and if the middle hadn’t been a little much I might have given it five, if only because I know enough academics to know (and I say this with love) that navel-gazing is kinda y’all’s thing. I need someone who thinks it sounds interesting to read it and then be my friend, because I want to talk about it with someone.