Rating: 
Summary: A Bittersweet Nearly Great Opus
Review: Like some of the other on-line reviewers, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Like many of them, I believe the author took on a difficult task. Like one of them, I believe the book is a little unrealistic. Let me explain. This must be many people's dream book: a tale of going back, you can go home again to your first (and only?) love. The author entices us and makes the premise exciting and believable. Still, there are questions, painful questions. One of them revolves around the resolution. Emily resolves what she has to resolve, to keep Jimmy at the center of her heart in a special position, a more special position, than anybody perhaps, FOREVER. After all, as the author/narrator astutely realizes, she has no other choice. Somehow, though, this resolution, as authentic (because it is bitter) as it is, contradicts and is at odds with not the meaning but the tone of her reuniting with Jimmy, her first and last love. Their entire "reunion" is not narrated or described to show it as exciting as even the well worn, worn out (?) marriage with her husband. If this is not deliberate, then it's a failure of writing. A more serious and more difficult to understand decision the author made is to mainstream (Protestantize) the characters. The characters have ethnic souls if not ethnic identities. Yet Jimmy's girl sounds like the most elemental of the fifties songs we all remember and loved. They were so wonderful, so all of us, so American. Yet Emily, New York City schooled with an Uptown New York City soul, is as far from Ames, Iowa as one can imagine. Jimmy is immersed in and married to soulful Mobile, Alabama. Why, then, do Jimmy and Emily have to be squeezed into an Everly Brother's "Cathy's Clown" scenario? I don't think it's the author's intention or control at work. I still enjoyed the book, as you will, but it convinced me NOT to contact my "sweetheart" from 1960. If Ms. Gertler's writing is any sign, a re-creation, renewal, or simply review of the relationship can never, never live up to the original, and I don't want the hurt of confirming that truth.
Rating: 
Summary: Dead On
Review: My wife suggested that I read this book -- and although I steer away from the genre known as "women's fiction" -- I loved this book. Read it, guys -- you'll be surprised.
Rating: 
Summary: twists and turns of life
Review: The simplified story-line of Jimmy's Girl is boy meets girl, boy and girl lose each other, girl finds boy again. In reality, the book is about much deeper issues that we all face at some point in our lives. I read Jimmy's Girl shortly after going through tumultuous midlife changes of my own, and I found it very easy to relate to the characters. Emily feels trapped by the comfortable life she has created for herself. Her children have occupied her thoughts for so long that in some ways she has lost sight of who she really is, so inevitably her mind wanders back to who she was before husband and family. She daydreams of her first love, Jimmy, and manages to find him through the internet. They meet again, and then both have to make decisions which will affect not only the two of them but their respective families. I think the real theme of this sweetly sad book is how seemingly insignificant things can change the direction in which our lives move. The wrong look, a missed phone call, a forgotten anniversary, these are the trivia which ultimately drive us to make the decisions which affect us. We all wonder "what if" when our lives are not going as we had hoped. Stephanie Gertler's characters have the guts to try to find out.
Rating:
Summary: Recapture the 60's and first love
Review: This book brought me right back -- to the Vietnam Era, to high school, to my first crush and my first love and my first experiments with physical intimacy. Gertler's writing is melodic, her choice of memories a mirror of my own. Everything she writes makes you nod with understanding. When the book ended, I felt empty...I wasn't ready to return. Here's hoping Gertler continues to write about coming of age.
Rating:
Summary: It is Wonderful@ A must for everybody who ever loved
Review: This book is for every person who ever loved and then lost the thing they probably needed most..a friend, a lover, a soulmate..Especially those who lived through a war and what that wartime did to the people involved. I could NOT put this book down..it reminded me of the 60's, 70's, and yes, even the 40's... It is especially 'perfect' because it gives the viewpoint of separation (during war times) of the woman, man, and how that separation affected EVERYBODIES life, not only the lovers in their youth... BUY this book and find out why and what and how you *really are/could've been* etc. I absolutely loved it..and could not put it down!
Rating:
Summary: An ok book..
Review: This book was an easy read and something that I am sure all of us have thought about at one point or another. Our first loves. However I am not into the Vietnam/peace thing and didn't enjoy that part of the reading. Like other reviewers, I didn't enjoy reading the same subject in the next chapter, he said/she said writing. I will however be reading other books by this author!
Rating:
Summary: Something's Missing Here
Review: This novel explores the rekindling of first love from the perspective of a 40-something woman and man. Languishing in an unfulfilling and boring marriage, Emily contrives to contact her first love in order to paint a series of pictures relating to his Vietnam experience. Jimmy, a sort of loser in the south, sees this as his chance to feel important in life again and exorcise some pain. There are many unbelievable things about this book, including the ease with which their spouses ok this obvious weekend affair. Why don't they kick up a fuss? And if nobody has the energy to object, why do the main characters choose to return to their marriages? The whole thing is somewhat distastful. Why not put all of this energy into improving their current relationships?
Rating:
Summary: Great back story details
Review: This surprisingly well written first novel jumps between the two perspectives of former sweethearts. Gertler does a great job mixing important back-story details from when the characters were teens thirty years earlier into each of the two narratives as she pushes the present-day stories forward. Too often back-story is written (and edited) without much thought, simply as a device to provide details to tie things together. But in Jimmy's Girl, the back-story is more important than the present and is written with power. This book took me by surprise. I was fortunate enough to receive an advance copy and expected to read only a couple of chapters, but ended up finishing it in two very enjoyable evenings.
Rating: 
Summary: A great idea for a story, but so much was missing
Review: This was a really wonderful idea for a story but I felt it lacked the passion it needed to truly captivate the reader. Emily's character was much too practical and uptight to be an intriguing main character. I felt like I didn't really get inside her head while reading this book because the writing seemed to emphasize surroundings rather than feelings. You got the feeling she was a deep person, but she just never completely opened up on the page. The character Jimmy was a stronger character because his feelings were more exposed to the reader and he was more dark and temperamental; I enjoyed the chapters where he was narrating. This story had so much potential, all it needed was two strong main characters and more passion.
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