Girls from Corona del Mar (Thorpe) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
The Girls From Corona del Mar is a slim book that leaves a deep impression. Mia and Lorrie Ann are vivid and fully formed, and their stories provoke strong emotions that linger like lived memory. Thorpe is a gifted writer who depicts friendship with affection and brutality, rendering all its love and heartbreak in painstaking strokes.
Steph Cha - Los Angeles Times


A knockout of a debut novel.... Pugnacious, risk-taking Mia, a child of divorce, grows up envious of Lorrie Ann, with her intact family and her elegant, upturned nose. Then in their junior year of high school, everything changes when a family tragedy strikes, marking “the first tap-tap on Lorrie Ann’s window­pane by those bad luck vultures.”... Thorpe is too firmly in control to let an abundance of plot points crowd out her narrative’s deeper meanings. Her worldly, rambunctious, feminist, morally interrogative prose style galvanizes ­every episode with smart, almost cosmic insights, tough talk, elegiac moments of love, dumb wonder, and, of course, further tragic events... We can’t help but root for these memorable heroines, and Thorpe’s beautiful twist of an ending is admirably earned.
Lisa Shea - Elle


The divergent paths of two girls raised in a Southern California beach town plot the course for Thorpe's affecting debut novel.... Thorpe unflinchingly examines the psychological tug-of-war between friends, and delves in to the pro-choice debate and issues relating to medical malpractice to give the personal narrative heft. The result is a nuanced portrait of two women who are sisters in everything but name.
Publishers Weekly


This debut novel would be unbearably grim if it were not for the sardonic humor of the first-person narration by Mia, who is so likable that it's hard to see why she has such a poor opinion of herself. The book should appeal to readers who enjoy dark-edged relationship dramas. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal


Best friends since high school, Lorrie Ann and Mia couldn’t be more different.... As time and distance separate the women, narrator Mia recounts every time the women tried (and mostly failed) to reconnect. This literary novel will leave readers questioning the myths and realities of complicated relationships. —Rebecca Vnuk
Booklist


Thorpe brings sensitivity to her well-trodden terrain of female friendship and dilemmas of choice, but Mia’s journey of discovery about herself and her "opposite twin" feels excessively binary. A slender, overplotted account of finding emotional peace.
Kirkus Reviews