Orange Is The New Black by Piper Kerman

With her career, live-in boyfriend and loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the rebellious young woman who got mixed up with drug runners and delivered a suitcase of drug money to Europe over a decade ago. But when she least expects it, her reckless past catches up with her; convicted and sentenced to fifteen months at an infamous women's prison in Connecticut, Piper becomes inmate #11187-424. From her first strip search to her final release, she learns to navigate this strange world with its arbitrary rules and codes, its unpredictable, even dangerous relationships. She meets women from all walks of life, who surprise her with tokens of generosity, hard truths and simple acts of acceptance. @goodreads 

MY REVIEW:

4 STARS 

I totally picked up this book because I love the show on Netflix and wanted to read about the real deal.



This is one of my favorite shows and it's funny because I could pick out some of the real people in the book that are in the show. Obviously the real names are not given.




Piper talks about the stupid, stupid drug stuff she got into with Nora. I mean moving drugs and money for a drug lord, come on. And then 10 years later, she gets caught and taken to jail! Just when you think you turned your life around, um, NOT! And then when they tell her she is going to trial and then to prison, it takes 6 years to get to the trial. I would have went nuts every day of those 6 years!

Piper talks about life in prison and about the friends she actually made there. I really enjoyed reading about this because it make it a little nicer having friends.

As Nina headed down the hill to the FCI, I felt a real sense of loss. She was the first real friend I had made, and I wouldn't have any contact with her at all. Prison is so much about the people who are missing from your life and who fill your imagination. Some of the women who had sisters or cousins down the hill in the high-security prison. One day while walking back to work after lunch, I glimpsed Nina through the back gate of the FCI and went crazy jumping up and down and waving. She saw me and waved too. The truck that patrolled the prison perimeter screeched to a halt between us. "Cut that shit out!" came sharply from the guard inside.

Piper really did have a job in the electrical area and people came and went from jobs, from the prison. It seemed like every time she made a good friend, they were off to to somewhere else.

I grew powerfully attached to Natalie in just a short time--she was very kind to me. and I could tell that being her bunkie conferred on me an odd credibility among other prisoners. But despite, or because of, the fact that we lived in the closest of quarters, I knew virtually nothing about her--just that she was from Jamaica and that she had two children, a daughter and a young son. That was really it. When I asked Natalie whether she had started her time down the hill in the FCI, she just shook her head. "No, bunkie, back in the day things were a little different. I went down there for a little while--an' it was nothin' nice." That was all I was going to get. It was clear that where Natalie was concerned, personal subjects were off limits, and I had to respect that.

Piper had a lot of people visiting her in the jail, unlike in the tv series. Larry, her fiance came all of the time. But she had friends and family coming all of the time. She was getting letters and tons of BOOKS in the mail. Yes, books! What would we do without our books! =)

I did enjoy this book a lot. The author also does an interview at the back of the book and she has a lot of references to different things concerning women in jail. I'm going to look into some of them!

GOODREADS REVIEW:

 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1249782195

AMAZON LINK TO THE BOOK:

https://www.amazon.com/Orange-New-Black-Womens-Prison/dp/0385523394/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1472262517&sr=1-1&keywords=orange+is+the+new+black+in+books