Book #5: Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

I almost always love modern re-tellings of old stories. I am a sucker for every Jane Austen retelling I come across, and this Shakespeare retelling was similar. This is a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew, and I probably wouldn't have picked it up without knowing that. The book follows Kate, a "shrewish" twenty-nine-year-old who dropped out of college, lives at home taking care of her younger sister and father, and is generally really grumpy and cross. She works at a preschool as an assistant teacher, and is on probation for saying things that consistently offend parents or teachers. One day her father, an absent-minded professor-type, asks her to marry his assistant to get him a green card before he gets sent back to Russia. And eventually she goes along with it, after some initial resistance--and she eventually gets more and more interested in Pyotr, and he begins to break down her walls just through his directness and straightforwardness.

I read this book in one short naptime--so it was a VERY quick read. It was a fun read, but not super-amazing or anything. It was hard to relate to Kate, although I did feel so sad for her at points, looking at how lonely and depressing her life must be. I was glad to see how everything worked out for her, even though it's hard to see how it could have done it in real life. I gave this one three stars on Goodreads--I liked it, but not that it was amazing or anything.