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    Fourth Comings: A Novel
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    Fourth Comings: A Novel
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    Fourth Comings: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    Fourth Comings: A Novel

    Written by Megan McCafferty

    Narrated by Renee Raudman

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Is the real world ready for Jessica Darling?

    At first it seems that she's living the elusive New York City dream. She's subletting an apartment with her best friend, Hope, working for a magazine that actually utilizes her psychology degree, and still deeply in love with Marcus Flutie, the charismatic addict-turned-Buddhist who first captivated her at sixteen.

    Of course, reality is more complicated than dreamy clichés. She and Hope share bunk beds in the "Cupcake"-the girlie pastel bedroom normally occupied by twelve-year-old twins. Their Brooklyn neighborhood is better suited to "breeders," and she and Hope split the rent with their promiscuous high school pal, Manda, and her "genderqueer boifriend." Freelancing for an obscure journal can't put a dent in Jessica's student loans, so she's eking out a living by babysitting her young niece and lamenting that she, unlike most of her friends, can't postpone adulthood by going back to school.

    Yet it's the ever-changing relationship with Marcus that leaves her most unsettled. At the ripe age of twenty-three, he's just starting his freshman year at Princeton University. Is she ready to give up her imperfect yet invigorating post-college life just because her on-again/off-again soul mate asks her to…marry him?

    Jessica has one week to respond to Marcus's perplexing marriage proposal. During this time, she gains surprising wisdom from unexpected sources, including a popular talk show shrink, a drag queen named Royalle G. Biv, and yes, even her parents. But the most shocking confession concerns two people she thought had nothing to hide: Hope and Marcus.

    Will this knowledge inspire Jessica to give up a world of late-night literary soirees, art openings, and downtown drunken karaoke to move back to New Jersey and be with the one man who's gripped her heart for years? Jessica ponders this and other life choices with her signature snark and hyper-intense insight, making it the most tumultuous and memorable week of her twenty-something life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateAug 7, 2007
    ISBN9781423344520
    Unavailable
    Fourth Comings: A Novel
    Author

    Megan McCafferty

    MEGAN MCCAFFERTY writes fiction for tweens, teens and teens-at-heart of all ages. The author of over a dozen novels, she’s best known for Sloppy Firsts and four more books in the New York Times bestselling Jessica Darling series. Described in her first review as “Judy Blume meets Dorothy Parker” (Wall Street Journal), she’s been trying to live up to that high standard ever since.

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    Reviews for Fourth Comings

    3.5/5

    238 ratings14 reviews

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    • 3/5
      END SPOILERS BELOW.

      It's difficult to decide between 3 or 4 stars for this. On the one hand, I didn't like Jessica as much in this one — she usually toes the line between smart snark and pretentious cynicism, and she dipped too much into the latter here. On the other hand, I think this was a deliberate choice, considering Jessica's audience and her own words toward the end about how she's presented herself to that audience. On the one hand, I don't appreciate feeling jerked around about a relationship that it seems likely will come to a positive conclusion at the end of novel #5 (this series has certainly been milking the ups and downs of Jessica/Marcus for all it's worth). On the other hand, I found the end (Marcus's letter in particular) affecting and heartbreaking, and Jessica's reasons for giving the answer she did don't feel manufactured: this is a perspective of Marcus that readers can share. I understand why Jessica loves him, but he's also an ephemeral, changeable sort of man, sort of character.

      Ultimately I'm going to rate down to three stars because I felt this novel was not as tightly edited as the previous books. There's some redundancy that should have been dealt with and even several typos. This isn't specifically the fault of the author — every author needs a good editor, but there's a tendency to give successful authors freer reign over later books in established series, to the detriment of the quality of the latter part of the series. However, it affected my reading experience, so there you go.
    • 2/5
      I really wish this series had stopped at Second Helpings. This story, and everything the main character thinks, feels and experiences is such a high school experience. It’s a classic story, but done so perfectly it feels fresh and new. We can sympathize with the teenage Jessica’s angst because we’ve all had similar experiences. This does not translate to college, and it’s even more out of place in the real world. Jessica’s whininess and general disdain for everyone makes sense when she’s stuck in Pineville, surrounded by meatheads, but when she finally escapes, she’s still the same person. She hates everyone, even her own friends. Even as a hipster 20 year old, it’s not realistic and it’s annoying. Second Helpings was a great ending, and the character showed some real growth in it, so I have to wonder what was the point of the last two books?
    • 3/5
      Having devoured all 3 previous books in the Jessica Darling series, I was really looking forward to reading this installment. However, this just wasn't up to par with the previous books.The way this book was written, from the point of view of Jessica keeping a diary of sorts in two notebooks for Marcus, just didn't work for me. It didn't flow as easily as the previous novels, and I found it difficult to get into the book. At times, the dialogue seemed contrived and I found it hard to believe Jessica was actually writing it in her notebooks. In this story, Jessica was more of an observer than a participant, which was a disappointment to me.So, while this book was an okay read, I expected so much more. p.s. If you haven't read the other books in the series, DON'T start with this one. You'll be completely lost, as it's assumed you are already familiar with the characters and their back stories.
    • 3/5
      The pace really threw me, especially since I started this right after charmed thirds. I loved that Hope was in this, but felt kind of betrayed by her. And I was not a fan of the ending. It just didn't feel right. Whatever happens in the final book cannot completely make up for this one.
    • 3/5
      I have really been struggling with this review. I feel so indifferent that it’s actually hard for me to determine whether I even liked this novel. Everything I had loved about the first two novels has completely disappeared by the fourth. I’m beginning to realize that what I loved so much was that I felt as if I were a friend of Jessica. Crazy, I know but that is how it felt. The two of us we just going through our lives together and while she was sharing more of her issues, I could completely empathize. It had become something of substance and I felt cheated by the singular week provided. It was the first time that the friendship felt superficial to me. She claims that she is putting down all of her feelings on paper so that she can sort through her thoughts concerning the proposal but there really wasn’t a lot of that. She just seemed to brush everything she was really feeling under the rug and there it remained until someone else brought it up. Perhaps I’m so indifferent because she is. I felt like she had lost a lot of the passion and excitement that had led me to her in the first place. I’m glad to know what happened next but she has become a person I doubt I would like to be around. I feel as if it’s almost as if the author is sick of her too. Honestly, I’m not really looking forward to the final installment.
    • 5/5
      After inadvertently rereading the entire Jessica Darling series every year like clockwork without fail since Books 3-4 were published, I think I can safely say that FOURTH COMINGS is my favorite of the five books.Are you surprised? Is this an unconventional choice? Sloppy Firsts had that sparkling magic of the first in a series you know will be good; Second Helpings was the fulfillment of a happy ending; Charmed Thirds allowed Jessica to develop more insight and maturity than before, plus did even more wonderful things with all the secondary characters; and Perfect Fifths—well, just read the title. Compared to the other books (with the possible exception of Charmed Thirds), FOURTH COMINGS is the saddest. (With the possible exception of Perfect Fifths) It’s the installment where the narrative form gets most in the way of Jessica’s typically candid journals—because here she’s addressing Marcus Flutie and, like she says, the moment there’s an audience, the honesty of the writing is inevitably affected.But…Still…Despite all that.Full disclosure: I have been in a similar state of emotions and mind as 22-year-old Jessica Darling for what feels like the past several years. It’s the stomach-flipping, giddy-with-terror feeling of not knowing what the hell you want to do an hour from now, let alone in ten years, and yet feeling all the societal pressure to make decisions about your CAREER and your BABYDADDY/BABYMAMA and your CHILDBIRTHING METHODS right now, now, now. It’s the fear of letting go that which we were certain of in our past but are not sure how it fits into our present and future.It is because of this similarity in our mindsets that I think makes me able to understand Jessica a lot at this stage in her life. There may be little in the way of plot, to speak nothing of the pacing (the whole book takes place over the course of less than a week), but what does that matter to me when I hang on to Jessica’s every word because I can see fragments of myself in all of her entries?I think Jessica Darling represents the worst in us, and that’s why her post-Book 2 tales make people suuuuper uncomfortable. In choosing the journal as her format of choice, McCafferty commits unapologetically to illustrating the parts of (female) human nature that most of us don’t like to see reflected in literature—our insecurity in the face of other, more accomplished, more beautiful, nicer women; our preoccupation with sex, relationships, and love, and how they are tied to our identities; our borderline-desperate search for the meaning and purpose that society demands from our lives. This is realism at its realest, and damn if it doesn’t hurt like a wake-up punch in the face.The Jessica Darling books are not just novels. They are what we would write to ourselves if we were articulate and introspective and talented enough to put our deepest, darkest, most shameful thoughts to paper.That’s why FOURTH COMINGS is my favorite.
    • 4/5
      Back and forth between Marcus and Jessica! As their relationship is rocky, you have to stay until the end to see what happens!
    • 5/5
      (review for both FOURTH COMINGS & PERFECT FIFTHS)In the final 2 books of the Jessica Darling series, our wires-crossed, love-imperfect couple decide if they'll make it or break it for good. While Jessica enters the post-college "real world," Marcus finally decided to go back to organized education in the form of Princeton. Still physically distant in location, Jessica thinks she's too old to re-live the college scene again. Will she wait for Marcus to graduate? Will Marcus dump her for a fresh-faced frosh? Will they find their perfect endings finally together - or finally apart?Unlike its predecessors, fourth comings chronicles only 1 week of Jessica Darling's life - and yet it packs the most thoughtful and emotional punch of the series. Again, at the end, I find myself in deep contemplation of "forever" and "whatever" that play a role in Jessica and Marcus's romantic entanglements. Then comes along perfect fifths that gives us a whole fourth-wall phenomenon where we dive into third-person present instead of relying solely on Jessica's notebooks. Which means we get a delicious glimpse into the wonder of Marcus Flutie. perfect fifths is simply spot-on as far as reminiscing about the entire series and tying everything into a wonderfully bittersweet conclusion.
    • 3/5
      This is the fourth book in the Jessica Darling series. I felt like a lot of the book simply rehashes plot points from the first three books in the series. At the beginning of this installment Jessica's longtime boyfriend Marcus proposes just as she's trying to break up with him. The rest of the book follows Jessica as she soul searches to figure out her answer. I was definitely satisfied with the ending, but the book itself wasn't as good as some of the earlier ones. There's too many over the top characters that fit cliche molds. I wonder if I outgrew the series or if it was just this book in particular that didn't work for me.
    • 4/5
      I didn't like this book at first, but then it grew on me. At times, the writing was too slick, referential and self-consciously snarky for my taste. At other times, Jessica's musings struck a chord, such as when her niece was accepted to a prestigious pre-K program, and Jessica hoped her niece remained happy, self-confident and undefeated by life. The relationship between Jessica and Marcus is a little tired, but I am still curious to see what happens in the next (and final) book. I kind of preferred Marcus's brother, Hugo, in this installment.
    • 1/5
      Blech. This was both shallow and very boring. Why do sequels almost always go so rapidly downhill? This series didn’t slump so much as free-fall. I found Jessica's diary to be tedious and overly detailed, and all the characters (especially the protagonist) shallow and annoying. At least the earlier books had some funny parts. Megan McCafferty, stop beating an eohippus and try something different!
    • 3/5
      Having devoured all 3 previous books in the Jessica Darling series, I was really looking forward to reading this installment. However, this just wasn't up to par with the previous books.The way this book was written, from the point of view of Jessica keeping a diary of sorts in two notebooks for Marcus, just didn't work for me. It didn't flow as easily as the previous novels, and I found it difficult to get into the book. At times, the dialogue seemed contrived and I found it hard to believe Jessica was actually writing it in her notebooks. In this story, Jessica was more of an observer than a participant, which was a disappointment to me.So, while this book was an okay read, I expected so much more. p.s. If you haven't read the other books in the series, DON'T start with this one. You'll be completely lost, as it's assumed you are already familiar with the characters and their back stories.
    • 5/5
      McCafferty, MeganCrownFourth comings2007In the 4th installment of her adventures, Jessica Darling is pondering a marriage proposal from Marcus Flutie, while working on establishing herself in the “adult” world. The same sense of humor and fun that pervades the firs books continues on in this work, though the plots adventures do skirt the chick-lit territory occasionally. Though McCafferty’s readers have matured along with Jessica, the 24-yr-old protagonist’s life no longer reflects the same adventures of her teen fan base. Balancing family and friends, love and work, the journal based narrative allows readers reflect on Jessica, while she in turn reflects on her life. Teen fans will be quietly anticipating the fifth and final volume.
    • 5/5
      So. What do you do when you've graduated from college at a prestigious university (that put you in debt for thousands of dollars) and you've discovered that you did not major in something useful and employable, but instead majored in psychology and can't find a job? And what do you do when you live in a city you can't afford and that your boyfriend hates? And what do you do when your sister suspects that your mom might leave your dad and it's making you question the entire institute of marriage, which is inconvenient considering that your boyfriend has just proposed to you?If you're Jessica Darling, you write about it. And not only do you write about it, but you write about it with your signature snark and pop-culture-bashing pizzazz. And it's laugh-out-loud funny and angsty without being annoying and it's totally un-put-down-able. The fourth book in the Jessica Darling series takes a slightly different format from her previous books. Instead of taking place over a year (or years), it takes place over one week in September. This is a very significant week for Jessica because at the beginning on the week, she went to Princeton intending to break up with her long-time boyfriend Marcus. Instead of breaking up, Marcus proposed to her and now Jessica has one week to mull it over and come to a decision. It's a decision that she never really thought she'd have to make, especially when she's 22 years old, essentially unemployed, and sharing a small basement apartment with her best friend and a lesbian couple. McCafferty is at the top of her game with this novel that perfectly captures the problem of a recent college grad that has way too many options. It's so hard to decide what to do because making a choice to do something means choosing NOT to do so many other things... I highly recommend this series for 20-somethings everywhere (and also everyone else... because it is awesome).