Early Decision by Lacy Crawford

Morning, everyone! Today I'm a stop on the TLC blog tour for Lacy Crawford's Early Decision.

In the tough world of college applications and admissions, parents know exactly who to turn to. Anne is an expert at helping high schoolers get into their school of choice. She tutors them on their essays and holds their hands (and their parents'!) throughout every step of the college application process. Her name is passed down from family to family as they all fight to get a top spot for their students at the nation's most sought after campuses. But how does one woman maintain sanity in the midst of so much craziness?!

This kind of college admissions process is one that is admittedly completely foreign to me. I stayed in state for school. I took the ACT, tested out of some classes, and had a GPA high enough to get me into my college of choice with no effort (NOT an Ivy or any other school mentioned in Early Decision). It's not that it wasn't an accomplishment, and frankly I loved my school and my experience there, it's that schools like the ones mentioned here weren't even on my radar for various reasons. This insane idea of cutthroat admissions and spending your senior year in high school pulling out your hair over getting into the college of your choice is something I just didn't experience. So I relied on Crawford to share that experience with me.

Early Decision was ok but in truth I wanted to love it and didn't. After seeing Admission (based on the book by Jean Hanff Korelitz) I fell immediately in love with the idea of Crawford's book. Perhaps that wasn't fair because unfortunately the characters and the story in Early Decision just didn't hit the spot for me.

Anne's tale had its moments but every time I felt like I connected with her, the story would go off on what seemed like a random wordy tangent making me lose all grasp of what was going on. The students' essays had the same effect. The momentum of the book stalled each time an essay or written assignment from one of Anne's clients popped up. It was an interesting concept but one that just didn't work for me as a reader.

Rating: 3.5/5

To see more stops on the tour check out the official TLC tour page here.

For more on Lacy Crawford you can visit her website here. You can also follow her on Twitter.