I have no finish date for this book because I didn't finish it
I can read; horror, I can read books that detail unpleasant subjects, I can read books where most of the characters are unlikeable. What I can't bother with are boring books, and Bittersweet is just that BORING. Nothing happens of any significance in the first 150 pages, which is surprising since the book is 380 pages.
Let's run down the list of things that made this book so bad.
1. A story that's been told so many times Hollywood rarely tries to do it anymore. Poor/white trash/ fish out of water girl somehow winds up at expensive East Coast college rooming with an obscenely wealthy girl whom she has nothing in common. But they becomes BFF's enough for the little Paris Hilton to invite boring drab Mabel to spend the summer with her at the family's summer compound. Who in the last 50 years named their kid Mabel?
2. Mabel wishes she was an intellectual, Mabel wishes she could read Paradise Lost by Milton, which is funny since that book is as boring as this book. Mabel salivates at the gobs of money this family has, but is so boring and unfun her roommate looks for ways to get away from her.
3. The Paris Hilton wanna be Ev/ Eve/ Genevieve is as vacant as she can be. And a slut on top of it. Not slutty enough to be interesting just a slut. The rest of the family all act as though they are inbred, maybe this was revealed later in the book, I don't know.
4. One family member is the lovable whacky eccentric, the rest are cold calculating and manipulative.

I confess I finally read some of the reviews with spoilers and can safely say that none of the plot that was revealed was enough to compel me to finish this Manhattan written crap. I honestly have no idea how this book got such rave reviews. How can nearly the first half of the book be written with nothing interesting happening? As for the narrator Mabel, if anything bad happens to her I am sure she deserves it for torturing the reader through her whining and boringness. ( )

Can't find the hard copy of my review, but on my BOOKS READ for 2014 list, it got 6 out of 5 stars! ( )

Originally, I was swept away by what I saw as the majesty of this book--the beautiful descriptions of a life I knew I'd never have, and the all-too-familiar descriptions of the life I understood. This was one of the first books I checked out from the library near my apartment when I moved here. I adored the cover, wanted to read about people with money, and didn't mind a Cinderella fantasy.
I'm re-reading a lot of books I originally admired, adored or raved about. This was originally one I was swept up in, so I wanted to get the feeling back.

I'm going to sum up the plot and spoil the book with a line from Rifftrax's version of one of the "Twilight" movies: "You're hoarding Nazi gold, aren't you?"
I wish I were kidding, but that's the plot twist at the end. On the re-read, it was all so clear. So, the author is talented with descriptions, settings, plot, plot twists--but her metaphors are odd and her characters are horrible people. Especially the following:
What a whiny, hypocritical, bratty protagonist. She has no idea how entitled she has become by even the first half of the book. I despise AnaBella SteeleSwann clones. She was one. Sure, it wasn't ZOMG ZOMG HOT CHEDWARD WOOLOOLOOO or Ooooh, whhaaaat have I done to deserve all this wealth? Nothing, but fall in love! (By which she means middle-school descriptors of lukewarm-at-best so-called erotica.) That's called prostitution, honey. It's not a bad thing--it's bad when you LIE about it. This book had a "rich friend" trope that just--ugh. No. No, no, and no.

I realize the narrator's only eighteen, but fuck's sake, she acted twelve and ooh, it clearly got on my nerves. She -marries- at eighteen. You know what? Statistically, you're gonna divorce by twenty-five and oooops, there goes all your wealth that you're crying was never really yours in the first place and whyyyy you and liiiife is soooo hard. But no, the book ends on a "happy" note.

Heads up on the heaping doses of subtle as well as blatant anti-Semitism, homophobia, sexism, utter disregard for anyone who's sterile or childfree, rrrraaaacism holy shit, anti-immigration sentiment, on and on. I sigh at how much I liked this when I first read it--the author is -that- skilled at describing things, that I winced at, and subsequently ignored, the list of things in the previous sentence. This is my way of making a very shallow amends.
UGH. ( )

Well written and compelling mystery with lots of twists. Sort of hated the main character. ( )

I loved this book. Great word pictures ( )