So I am trying to broaden my horizons as far as reading as many genres as I can. I admit I was never really into Young Adult novels, not even when I was a young adult, but that’s not to say they don’t have some merit or aren’t fun because quite frankly – just look at Harry Potter!
I found this one at random on Twitter like I usually do. Freshly published, I think independently, it had no reviews and the blurb peaked my interest. It claimed to be a story about an awkward Australian teenage girl. How could I resist that? I LOVE AWKWARD. Australian humor is a little…. strange… so I was really hoping to find something face-peelingly awkward here.
I did not find that. Instead I found an endearing little story about a sometimes socially clunky gifted teenage girl. I mean sure, the first real chapter is awkward as anything, starting with an exasperated lamentation about how she’ll never be able to celebrate her birthday again because everyone will remember it as the day that cheerleader committed suicide. A little harsh but kinda funny in it’s innocence. It’s not a psychopathic entry, she didn’t even know the cheerleader.
It goes through an average year of trying to find friends and then settling for whomever is within physical proximity. There are a lot of flippant little thoughts here and there that just made me chuckle. In all honesty it just reminded me of my own slightly awkward youth.
Faults: Even though it tries to be a diary with entries it is written in present tense including dialogues where the characters are described. So basically written in novel format. This however did not cause any problems with flow or anything else. There did however appear to be no plot what-so-ever. Again, I find this charming but others may not. There was also a few pretty glaring grammatical blunders that weren’t picked up by the editor but I think this is her first book so I am treating it softly. Obviously, being as I am American, I needed to Google a bunch of Australian slang and games but that was actually pretty entertaining!
Favorite bits: The flippancy. I’ll attach an except to show you exactly what I mean. This book also has possibly the best first line ever. “Good bye year eight. I will not miss you.” AMEN. I would actually happily recommend this to any socially awkward/gifted tween/teen girls. It’s rather adorable and doesn’t have anything offensive in it.
