The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus

I saw this movie a few years ago when it came out and I remember liking it but not enough to buy or even really watch again. A few weeks ago I was wandering the aisles of my library without any idea of what to read next. I stumbled upon "The Nanny Diaries" and thought it could be a fun read. I must say I really enjoyed this book. It was funny, real, and definitely made me grateful to have never been a nanny before (though I'm sure not all nanny gigs are like those portrayed in the book). I love kids and have had many jobs working with them, but have never been in any working situation even remotely related to what Nanny (oddly enough the name of the nanny in the story) had to put up with.

Nanny is a graduate student at NYU who seeks a part-time nanny position and finds the X family, a very rich and dysfunctional family with a cheating dad who works too much and a non-working mom who somehow doesn't have enough time in the day to pay any attention to her 4-year old son. Nanny puts up with being treated like scum and works way more hours than originally agreed to and takes amazingly good care of Grayer, despite the stressful working environment and mistreatment by her employers.

I think I liked this book because the heroine was a girl I could relate to: someone who was working to put herself through school, loved working with kids, had a great, supportive family, had a life outside of work but genuinely cared about her job, even when she probably shouldn't. Nanny's narrative of her life was very funny and so enjoyable to read. Since I had seen the movie I knew the ending wasn't good, meaning the X's don't suddenly become wonderful and apologize for being losers and give her a huge bonus, but I wanted to keep reading anyway. [Side note: when I know a story is stressful or has a bad ending, I usually can't stand watching/reading it. For example, the movie Mrs. Doubtfire is one of my least favorite of all time because the whole thing is stressful. I refuse to watch it because I can't stand watching all these bad things happen.] Despite my aversion to "bad endings" I really was ok with the Nanny Diaries ending, even though it doesn't all get wrapped up in a beautiful fairytale package. It was real, and I liked that.

Overall I definitely would recommend The Nanny Diaries to anyone. Fun read!

4 out of 5 stars

The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern

I read this book last month and decided I needed to blog about it before I forgot what it was about and whether or not I even liked it.

The Book of Tomorrow, yet another book by Cecelia Ahern, is about a very wealthy girl whose dad commits suicide and has to move to the country with her mom to live with her eccentric aunt and uncle. She discovers a journal in which she finds entries dated from the next day. As she learns the events for the following day, she tries to see if she can change the future, and if she can, see if she should.

I think I would have enjoyed the story more if I had read it more quickly. I read the first half over a few weeks, only picking it up sporadically; but the second half I read in about 2-3 days. I kind of felt the story took an odd turn toward the end, straying from the general feel of the book. At any rate, I did enjoy the read and I would recommend this to others. Not my favorite Cecelia Ahern book, but not my least favorite either. As always, she has the cleverest ideas for her stories. Not always the best execution (in my opinion) but always interesting and entertaining.

3 out of 5 stars