The Circle of Friends Book 1: Lori by L. Diane Wolfe

The Circle of Friends Book 1: Lori
L. Diane Wolfe
Dancing Lemur Press (2009)
ISBN 9780981621005
Reviewed by Avni Gupta (age 16) for Reader Views (4/09)

When I heard about “The Circle of Friends Book 1: Lori,” I was really excited about reading it. Receiving the book only made my want a lot greater! I wanted to read this book because t is about swimmers and most of my really good friends are swimmers, so I thought that it would give me a new insight to swimmers. This book did not live up to my expectations at all. I had thought that it would be a cute, inspiring read about a girl who knows what she wants and goes after it. Instead, I got a book about a girl who was an idiot who worked really hard so that she could get to the Olympics.

This book starts out with Lori, the main character saving one of her friends from some bullies at their school. After that, the bullies decide to take out their anger on her, so the next day, they take her into the boy’s bathroom and start beating her up with a metal rod. Luckily for her, Jason, the starting quarterback of the high school football team is there to save her! After saving her, Jason decides to dump his girlfriend because he wants to start going out with Lori, after not noticing her for the past three some years.

Once the two of them start going out, things start going really well for the both of them. To them, and all of the people that interact with them, it seems as if they have found their better halves. Now everyone wants to know, will they last through the end of high school and into the beginning of college, even if they go to different schools?

All in all, I thought that this book dragged on and on without much of a central problem to keep the reader interested. After Lori and Jason get married, there isn’t much left to happen, but most of the book is actually after their marriage! I kept on waiting for something bad to happen to one of them, such as Lori getting raped or Jason cheating on her, to make the plot become more visible, but none of that ever happened. I also thought that it was slightly unrealistic for Lori and Jason to find their “soul-mate” after knowing each other for like ten minutes. “The Circle of Friends Book 1: Lori” by L. Diane Wolfe was almost like Romeo and Juliet, in that Lori and Jason’s love was slightly childish and it seemed like they were only in love so that they could say that they were in love.