Story for the Week
One year ago, Corinne was a senior in high school. Having wrapped the fall musical in November, she focused on practicing relentlessly for speech season. She had a love/hate relationship with theater and speech. She desperately loves performing, but the parts she wanted seemed just out of reach. And her inability to schedule time with coaches for speech frustrated her to no end.
Fast forward to today, as she prepares for her first college finals this week. I regularly receive texts from her about how she loves the freedom of college—going to the bathroom in the middle of class, wandering freely around campus, choosing when and where to eat lunch. And the only love/hate relationship she really has now is with her philosophy class. And in three weeks, she faces the biggest journey of her life so far when she jets off to Liverpool to spend her spring semester studying abroad. 😲
Corinne fell in love with performing in middle school. Her first audition didn’t work out the way she expected. In sixth grade, fresh out of grade school, most kids think they’re on top of the world, and Corinne has always been a confident kid. When she auditioned for the show that year, however, she was cast in the ensemble…and she was devastated.
I tried to encourage her. She had made the cast. She would be on stage. I explained to her the idea of paying her dues, that she had to work her way up to a named character, and that she had to really put her whole self out on the stage. It didn’t help at first, but as the rehearsals turned into an actual show, she embraced the idea of just enjoying it.
It paid off in eighth grade when she was one of seven middle schoolers selected to perform in the high school show of The Wizard of Oz. I think that’s when she decided that performing wasn’t going to be just an extracurricular for her. It was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life, and once she decided, that was it. She loves everything about it. Even through the exhaustion that comes along with it, you can see the enjoyment on her face when she’s on stage.
Through high school, she never stopped participating in theater. We had lots of discussions about how competitive the field is. I think (ok, I know 🙄) I even told her once that she should choose a different field if she was going to spiral every time she didn’t get the part she wanted because she was going to lose more parts than she would win. (I’m pretty sure I was the subject of her therapy session that week.)
Private voice lessons have helped her be bolder in her singing. She takes feedback from her teachers to heart and has seen the difference it makes in her performance. She understands (in her head at least) that she has to learn how to accept rejection because she is pursuing an extremely competitive career.
We recently took one of her high school friends with us to see Mean Girls – The Musical at the theater. Over the course of the evening, the conversation went from this year’s high school theater and speech program to if Corinne likes college.
In high school, theater is an extracurricular. Even though it took up an inordinate amount of Corinne’s time and caused her crazy levels of anxiety, she participated because she loved it. In college, her schedule centers around theater. She enrolled in a tap class this year and will be required to take at least three more semesters of dance. In fact, her dance teacher suggests that musical theater majors take a dance class every semester.
Choir and voice lessons—three semesters. Involvement in a show as a performer or crew—six semesters. Functional class piano—two semesters. Stagecraft, sight singing, opera—one semester each. She’ll be taking core classes, of course, but she will definitely be in performance overload. These courses will take up an inordinate amount of time outside the classroom.
But one of the things she described to her friend was how supportive the instructors are, how much she’s learning, how much she feels her technique is improving. She also knows that she has to earn the parts she will get. Nothing is going to be handed to her. She’s not entitled to anything.
She won’t be performing in Liverpool. Her study abroad opportunity stems from being in her university’s honors program, so she’ll get some of her core classes done there. Her focus will be academics versus performance. But this, too, will be a huge shift for her.
Corinne will share a flat with six or seven other students. She’ll have her own bedroom but will share the rest of the living space. Her room and board package only includes lunch, so she will have to prepare her own breakfast and dinner. Grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, managing her time will all be on her, along with managing her classes and homework and continuing to work hard to earn what she wants.
While I wouldn’t describe Corinne as entitled, like one of the sisters in the book reviewed below, she has kind of a cushy gig right now. Groceries appear in the refrigerator and the cabinets with little to no effort from her. We have a housekeeper who comes every other week to clean the floors and the bathrooms. I’m usually home to wake Corinne up if she oversleeps. I can warm up her breakfast if she’s running late. She is not typically the one cooking dinner unless it includes mashed potatoes or mac and cheese. 😉
One of her advisors told her that study abroad students grow up quickly. They have to because they are totally on their own. It’s a little scary, probably for me more than her if I’m honest. But I’m excited to see what a difference a semester makes.
Book Review
⭐⭐
2 Stars for The Good Bride by Jen Marie Wiggins
280 pages
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Publication Date: December 10, 2024
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books.
Publisher’s Description
One year after a devastating hurricane, bride-to-be Ruth Bancroft is marrying her perfect groom in a quaint fishing village on the Gulf Coast. The weekend is carefully curated, with the displays of pomp and social media magic meant to promote an area still struggling to rebuild as well as bring Ruth’s estranged family back together.
Yet as good intentions often go, this road to wed is hell and paved in complications. With tensions rising between the family and the bridal party, long-buried secrets come to light, and accusations start flying. Things officially spiral out of control when the oceanfront rehearsal dinner is rocked by a series of gunshots, and a high-profile guest goes missing. As the investigation gets underway, it turns out that everyone has something to hide.
************
Main Characters:
- Ruth – grew up with her mother and two sisters, left home after college when she took a teaching job in Savannah, returned to Blue Compass for her wedding at the family vacation house on the Gulf Coast
- Teo – Ruth’s fiancé, works as an attorney in Savannah
- Caroline – Ruth’s wealthy mother, their vacation home was unaffected by a recent hurricane and is the location for Ruth’s wedding
- Sophia – Ruth’s oldest sister, works as a social media influencer @sophiasez, contracted with sponsors for some of the wedding decor
- Jo – Ruth’s older sister, works as an attorney, married with twins
- Thaddeus – Ruth’s estranged alcoholic father, Ruth invited him to her wedding
- Kayla – owner of a bridal planning shop started by her mother, organizing Ruth and Teo’s wedding
- Marcus – Kayla’s father, Blue Compass sheriff
The town of Blue Compass has a long way to go to recover from Hurricane Charlie, which hit the small town a year ago. Spared from the hurricane’s destruction is Summerhouse, the Bancroft vacation home and the site of Ruth’s upcoming wedding. As family and friends invade the town, protesters picket the town council, which is being wooed by developers that want to rebuild the area into a tourist destination. Add to that the people who are only interested in Savannah’s “wedding of the year” and the disappearance of one of Ruth’s family members, and calling it chaos is quite the understatement.
That’s the gist of the story. The description appealed to me as a fan of Big Little Lies, but this book really fell flat for me. Told from the perspectives of multiple characters, irrelevant secrets abound here. We get hints throughout the beginning of the book about the “long-buried secrets” mentioned in the book’s description. When they’re finally revealed, however, they have little to do with the present day. And the protest of the town council is completely unnecessary in my opinion because it adds nothing to the story.
Nothing really exciting happens until almost halfway through the book when the high-profile wedding guest vanishes. Even after, we don’t really see much of the investigation. When you read a whodunit, you want to suspect everyone. But there are so many minor characters in this book that I couldn’t keep them straight.
The author introduces every single character by their full name, with a description of who they are and what they do. Honestly, I don’t care what the name of the bartender is or Ruth’s old crush who is a suspect for only a millisecond because he has an alibi. It almost feels like the author throws in so many characters because she doesn’t want you to figure out too early what happened, but all she did was confuse me…and that makes me not care very much. I also didn’t like most of the characters anyway.
Aside from the characters, the names of the businesses (and homes) in the town made me roll my eyes…a lot. They are odd and awkward and sound like names you would find in a children’s book or television show. The name of the town is Blue Compass, which sounds more like a business than a town. The Bancroft vacation home is called Summerhouse. It’s literally a summer house so weird that it would be named Summerhouse. Kayla’s wedding planning business is Two Be Wed. There’s LookSee Lounge, the neighborhood Nautilus Cove, the Sunny Side Up Cafe, Coastal Catering. You get the idea. It makes me feel like we’re in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood Land of Make Believe or something.
To top it off, there are 23 references to Hurricane Charlie, so every dozen pages or so. I get it. The town was decimated by Hurricane Charlie. It’s taking the residents a long time to repair things, and that’s why there’s the conflict with the town council. But that conflict doesn’t do anything to drive the story forward. The wedding could be the revenue generator for the town without the protests or the developers.
This book was confusing on the best days and tough to finish. I would not recommend it.
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