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    Carpe Diem
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    Carpe Diem
    Unavailable
    Carpe Diem
    Ebook326 pages4 hours

    Carpe Diem

    By Autumn Cornwell

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    In this delightful romantic adventure, a 16-year-old overachiever learns how to seize the day.

    "I've got my entire life planned out for the next ten years — including my PhD and Pulitzer Prize," claims 16-year-old overachiever Vassar Spore, daughter of overachiever parents, who in true overachiever fashion named her after an elite women's college.

    Vassar expects her sophomore summer to include AP and AAP (Advanced Advanced Placement) classes. Surprise! Enter a world-traveling relative who sends her plans into a tailspin when she blackmails Vassar's parents into forcing their only child to backpack with her through Southeast Asia.

    On a journey from Malaysia to Cambodia to the remote jungles of Laos, Vassar sweats, falls in love, hones her outdoor survival skills — and uncovers a family secret that turns her whole world upside-down.


    Vassar Spore can plan on one thing: she'll never be the same again.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateMay 26, 2009
    ISBN9781466807105
    Unavailable
    Carpe Diem
    Author

    Autumn Cornwell

    Squat toilets, profuse sweating, bamboo huts, jumbo centipedes—these are just some of the delights Autumn Cornwell has encountered in her global travels. Not to mention the can’t-believe-it’s-true Laotian jungle adventure which inspired her first novel, Carpe Diem.     A travel junkie, Autumn has explored 22 countries and counting. She’s spent the last couple summers working with refugees and orphans in Burma, Thailand, and Laos. Southeast Asia remains close to her heart since her days as a missionary kid in New Papua—where she ate her weight in guavas and mingled with reformed headhunters and cannibals. Which was nothing compared to navigating the intrepid jungles of the TV & Film Industry, where she spent most of her career.     Autumn lives in Los Feliz, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, with her husband JC, and their son Dexter.

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    Reviews for Carpe Diem

    3.5/5

    96 ratings12 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This book over all was enjoyable and had a heart warming ending. The characters were interesting and some of them were unrealistic in the best way possible. My favorite thing about the book is that the main character is writing a book about the exact same thing. The main character would get feedback from her friends about her book so the author criticizes her own writing within the story. (I hope that made sense) overall would reccomend to someone who just wants a good read and doesn't take writing too seriously.
    • 4/5
      The characters can be cartoonish at times (Malaysian cowboy?? List-making overachiever named Vassar??) but reading it put me in mind of the old screwball comedy movies and that's not all bad. Entertaining and amusing coming-of-age story.
    • 1/5
      I liked the cover of this book enough that I bought it on my last trip to Powell's. My level of engagement went precipitously downhill once I opened said cover. Tissue-thin plot, characters I didn't like, and writing I found difficult going overwhelmed the nicely done travel bits. The big mystery at the heart of the book was obvious within the first couple of pages. There just isn't much here to like.
    • 3/5
      Carpe Diem turned out to be a surprisingly good read about travels in Southeast Asia (where, according to the book, rolls of toilet paper are placed on restaurant tables to be used as napkins). This is one of the few times I've read about the Hmong since The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, and I found the contrast between the happy family and the drug den very interesting. Ultimately it's a YA novel with the requisite teen age love story, and the worst possible narrator, Lynde Houck on the audiobook, and alas a really stupid christian miracle (what do you expect from the daughter of missionaries?). But it's worth a read for the very interesting details of travel.
    • 3/5
      This was an okay travel adventure novel based on a girl named Vassar. Vassar is a product of super-hyper parents who have her make life goals each and every night, planning out her next 20 years. She plans to graduate valedictorian, go to an Ivy League school, earn a phD and later a Pulitzer. Her whole summer is packed full of AP courses and extra tutoring in order for her to edge out another girl who is close competition. Then her kooky grandmother sends her plane tickets for a tour in Malaysia, blackmailing her parents with something mysterious. Her parents let her go, even though Vassar does not really want to. Vassar goes to Malaysia, with 10 bags full of every possible travel precaution. She has promised to write a novel on the journey to get credit for her AP course, and she dutifully emails her chapters to her other overachieving friends. Her grandmother seems a little crazy, but she gets Vassar and Hanks (the cute Asian helper/bodyguard) to help her find things for a collage. Vassar finds herself breaking rules and doing things she never thought she could. Crazy stuff continues to happen, and she is taken hostage in a tribal opium den. An ok story, the girl realizes how her life goals change as she gets a serious and predictable reality shock. 3 stars—fluff, didn’t seem real  
    • 5/5
      This enjoyable story goes from moments of hilarity to moments of terror as it follows a young women on her journey of self-discovery through Southeast Asia. Vassar Spoor is just as preppy as her name sounds--encouraged by her parents to set goals and aim for the top she has a life plan that includes becoming valedictorian of her prep school, attending Vassar, and marrying a doctor. But she doesn't count on her Grandma Gerd sending her a plane ticket so that she can spend the summer trekking through Southeast Asia with her. Mysteriously Vassar's parents decide she should go--after it appears Grandma Gerd has blackmailed them with a family secret. Suddenly Vassar is thrust into a world of high humidity, strange bathroom habits, Malaysian cowboys, un-trustworthy relatives, and 'the big secret'. She manages to survive it all, learns to 'LIM'--live in the moment, and learns a lot about herself--including "the big secret", which concerns her very identity.I highly enjoyed this romp of a story, Vassar's adventures are truly over the top in hilarity and danger. Having traveled to Southeast Asia I also delighted in the many aspects of the setting and culture that I recognized--the author did a wonderful job of describing the unique locale. At least I never found myself mooning a bunch of Asians after a bathroom mishap on a boat, but I can see it happening! Some of the antics of the grandmother and the danger she put Vassar in made me really angry, and while she miraculously survives the lightheartedness trivializes some of the very real dangers of travelling in this part of the world--or with a grandmother who will steal and cheat to get her way. Vassar's courage and ability to overcome lost contact lenses, hostile natives, and the terrors of the jungle were amazing. I would highly recommend this book to anyone! The audio version is wonderful, by the way, the narrator captured each characters voice with the right nuance and kept up with the fast pace of this adventurous story well.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this book! From the first page I was hooked with the interesting plot. My only wish is that there was sequel, I didn't feel as if the relationships were developed enough. I wanted to see more of them.
    • 5/5
      This is a quirky book, but I really liked it. Vassar Spore lives with parents who are planners and organizers, and as such her life is planned down to the minute, including how she will already become the valedictorian of her class, even though she is a junior. Her parents tell her she doesn't have time for romance or anything outside of the curriculum until...her grandmother sends her a ticket to Malaysia to stay with her for the summer. This results in a wild, unplanned trip, culminating in a trek up a Laotian mountain. Things are definitely out of Vassar's control, and it is chaotic but fun. This is definitely a coming of age book, and there are some unexpected twists, but it was good. Very refreshing and funny and unusual.
    • 4/5
      This was a very sweet teen romantic comedy. The protagonist is your typical prep school student soon to be valedictorian who has solid life goals with some parts TBD (to be decided) so you know there is a glimmer of hope for her. Mix her up with an eccentric blackmailing artist grandmother, an unlikely hero, and South East Asia and you know the summer is going to be life altering for this girl. It all plays out in a satisfying read.
    • 3/5
      Based on everyone else's reviews and mine, I'm not sure we read the same book!The Good: The characters were cool. You got your hippie internationally traveling Grandma, your Asian cowboy love interest, your over-bearing all-or-nothing parents, you super smart (but different) friends, and your over-acheiver main character.Vassar got into really interesting situations. Even though they did not make me laugh out funny, but they did make me smile.Umm... I can't really think of anymore good thinks to say about this book.The Bad: Vassar really got on my nerves. In my opinion, I felt that she was too much of a smart ass to be relateable. Although she does mature eventually, we were already 2/3 into the book before we saw that change! I just wanted to smack her so bad.Not only is she a smart aleck, the girl bought food sanitizer from someone off the street (that is just retarded), brought 10 jumbo bags with her ON A TREK (you'd think someone that smart would know what a trek is), and just complained about the heat on almost every single freaking page (of course it hot, it's Asia in the summer!).Don't get me wrong, I love character growth as much as the next person, but Vassar is just out of my empathetic range. I just can't find her relateable.Another thing, almost all the reviews were saying how wonderful the descriptions of the scenery were... Really? Sorry, but I just don't see it. Maybe it's because I'm Asian and I already knew about the cultures there, but I thought most of them really boring and I wished the author could've toned it down a bit. Sometimes, when I wanted more misadventures in traveling, I got descriptions of a temple.Also, "The Big Secret" was really predictable. I didn't guess exactly what it was, but I got the main idea early on in the book. And that is no fun at all when you can guess the big mystery that early.Overall: I thought this was going to be a fast-paced, exciting read with relateable characters who just leap off the page. That was not what I got. IN my opinion, Carpe Diem was very boring and it just frustrated me so much because it could've- no, should've been so much better!Grade: C
    • 2/5
      This book didn't really do much for me. Granted, I am 26 and this book is for young adults. The concept of the story was a good one. However, I don't feel like the author delivered on it. The mystery in the book was very, very simple to figure out. (again that could be my age showing). I thought Vassar's journey was interesting (especially since she travelled to countries that would not be a person's #1 choice). I was most disappointed with the end of the book. The introduction and rising action took up a large chunk of the book while the falling action was minimal. Not only was the falling action too short it wasn't very good. The main character, Vassar, does a complete 180 changing her entire lifestyle. I feel the author should have taken a more complex route and incorporated aspects of the person before the trip with the person after the trip to create a new person. The fact that she did not takes away from the authenticity she strived to achieve. To be honest, I probably would not recommend the book.
    • 3/5
      Vassar has everything on track with her life. Her mother is a life coach and has spent the whole of Vassar's life being her personal life coach. She has a few friends, and grand plans for her last 2 years of high school that will ensure her entry into the college Vassar. That is until her grandmother calls and blackmails her parents into sending her to join her grandmother on a tour of southern Asia. This change of plans throws Vassar for a loop and she learns more about herself and her family than she ever dreamed she would.