If you're like me, Judy Blume greatly shaped your childhood and adolescence. While many of her devoted preteen fans may have wandered away from Blume after she helped guide them through periods and kissing and freckles — rude move, dudes — her forays into writing for adults have been worthy in their own right. I'm guilty of backburner-ing In the Unlikely Event this year in favor of more "serious" books, myself, and I'm admonishing myself for it the more I read about it. The novel is loosely based on a series of plane crashes that happened in Blume's New Jersey community when she was a girl, and The New York Times Book Review gushed that the resulting book captures the "pure shock and wonder of living." I think this might just be the book I end my year with.
