The Random House Publishing Group, in conjunction with Goodreads First Reads, offered this book as a giveaway.  I was lucky enough to win one of the ARCs for review, prior to its release today, March 29, 2011.  

Synopsis from Goodreads:  “When Christina Haag was growing up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, John F. Kennedy, Jr., was just one of the boys in her circle of prep school friends, a skinny kid who lived with his mother and sister on Fifth Avenue and who happened to have a Secret Service detail following him at a discreet distance at all times. A decade later, after they had both graduated from Brown University and were living in New York City, Christina and John were cast in an off-Broadway play together. It was then that John confessed his long-standing crush on her, and they embarked on a five-year love affair. Glamorous and often in the public eye, but also passionate and deeply intimate, their relationship was transformative for both of them. With exquisite prose, Haag paints a portrait of a young man with an enormous capacity for love, and an adventurous spirit that drove him to live life to its fullest.”

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I am on the fence with this memoir.  I liked it, but I don’t think the  style of writing is  necessarily for me.  This is the very beautifully told story of Haag’s relationship with JFK Jr, and I learned a lot of information about the Kennedys.  Haag writes beautiful descriptions and creates breathtaking visuals.  However, as a lot of this story banks on description, I found myself having difficulty pressing on within the memoir.  I am more interested in the meat of a story, and a lot of time is spent denoting Haag’s background, which I personally find unnecessary to the novel.  Yet, this aspect provides much insight into the author, which I believe many readers will enjoy; it’s just not for me. 

I also had some difficulty with the sequence of events.  Haag tends to jump around from memory to memory and, while a majority of the time this was not an issue, at times I had to re-read sections because I was unable to follow along.  I believe many readers will have no difficulty following the sequence, but I need a little more structure to my novels.

The main story was wonderful, though I came away disliking JFK Jr. a tad, and I don’t think that was the intended purpose of the novel.  Most of the memoir was very interesting, and I highly suggest this memoir for history buffs and anyone looking for an insider’s view of the Kennedy family.  Three stars.