Annotation:
Obnoxious, superficial, British teenager writes an irritating, vapid diary detailing the following: “I think I’m ugly, I want to die, this guy is really cute, I hate my best friend, my parents are stupid, I hate school because I would rather think about boys, am I a lesbian, and my sister is gross.” Repeat as necessary for 200+ pages in varying order, and this is Georgia’s life.
Justification for Rejection:
Georgia, teenage British girl keeps a diary of just about every detail of her life, and I do mean every detail. She writes her feelings about her friends, guys she likes and wants to date, guys she doesn’t like but ends up dating, and how horrible her life is. Except her life isn’t really that horrible, she’s just an average girl who worries far too much about things that are not terribly important in the grand scheme of things. These things are normal for some teens to worry about, but Georgia does so to the extreme. But the second something else comes along, her emotions can either go up or further down. She’s an emotional roller coaster, and a pretty convincing example of a teen taken to extremes.
Georgia helps her friend scout out local produce boy, Tom, only to discover he has a much hotter older brother whom she has dubbed “Sex God.” When her friend Jas and Tom hit it off, she becomes bitter and jealous and works hard to destroy Tom and Jas’ relationship. Throughout her conflicting feelings for Jas, and Sex God Georgia has to be bothered with going to school, finding out her dad may be a transvestite, and other overly dramatized common occurrences. Of course these things ruin her life beyond repair, and she writes things like “I could kill myself,” or “I could kill Jas.”
Georgia proceeds to go on dates with a couple of guys, though she doesn’t like them, she is just holding out for SG. I have to presume she is just dating them to waste time until her plan to get SG comes to fruition. As relationships between her and her circle of acquaintances change rapidly, her dad moves to New Zealand, she thinks her mom is having an affair, and she conspires to get SG broken up with his current girlfriend so she can have a crack at him. A difficult story to summarize, as there is not a huge amount of story to relate, just “this person did this, I did that, and I hate so and so.” The book becomes merely her overly charged emotional reactions to events, and criticisms of other characters. It is however, a somewhat realistic look into the sick mind of a superficial teenager.
Let’s start off with what the book does well. For starters, the author really gets into the mind of a teen girl, and really seems to hit a lot of developmental themes by doing this. The use of British slang was also fun. OK, that’s about the only redeeming quality of the book in my opinion, because Georgia’s character is such a tosser, that all of these things only served to make the book more painful to read. I don’t think the book was written poorly, it’s just that I cannot tolerate the character doing what I mentioned in my annotation for 200 pages. Georgia is a vapid, superficial, whiny prat, which in my mind disqualifies this book for a nomination. If this book had a story, instead of just internal thoughts, and more than a formulaic girl meets boy, boy is with someone already, suffer-suffer-connive-and-suffer, end up with boy at the end story I could have nominated it. I think the author did a great job making a despicable character, but I certainly don’t think the book qualifies as excellent YA lit. In fact, this should be an instruction manual of how not to be a teenager.
The book started out funny at first, but after 20 pages of hyper-charged hormone harping, it began to get repetitive. I thought that once she had covered this ground, she would move on with her life, but no she stayed there for 200 pages. Quite frankly, I despised Georgia and had to force myself to read this thing from cover to cover. Once I started to despise Georgia, I tried to rethink my mindset, by changing my view to who I was at fourteen or so. No dice. Even as a teen, I would not have liked this book or character. In high school, I avoided girls, and other people like Georgia.
My last thought, (Spoiler alert) this story could have been better if SG, and Georgia actually had some common reason to “fall in love” with each other, but they don’t. They just both think the other is hot, and so have no solid basis for any sort of relationship. If they had anything in common, such as polo, or chess, or even music/movies anything, getting together would make sense. The whole relationship thing with these two comes off as very stilted. She notices him, they hate each other for a while, then just magically end up together. This kind of sends the wrong message to teens, as it shows the only basis you need for a relationship is physical attraction. If the book continued another 50 – 100 pages, I would guess that Gerogia would either A) lose her virginity, or B) break up with SG within a month due to lack of anything in common.
Genre: Humor
Obnoxious, superficial, British teenager writes an irritating, vapid diary detailing the following: “I think I’m ugly, I want to die, this guy is really cute, I hate my best friend, my parents are stupid, I hate school because I would rather think about boys, am I a lesbian, and my sister is gross.” Repeat as necessary for 200+ pages in varying order, and this is Georgia’s life.
Justification for Rejection:
Georgia, teenage British girl keeps a diary of just about every detail of her life, and I do mean every detail. She writes her feelings about her friends, guys she likes and wants to date, guys she doesn’t like but ends up dating, and how horrible her life is. Except her life isn’t really that horrible, she’s just an average girl who worries far too much about things that are not terribly important in the grand scheme of things. These things are normal for some teens to worry about, but Georgia does so to the extreme. But the second something else comes along, her emotions can either go up or further down. She’s an emotional roller coaster, and a pretty convincing example of a teen taken to extremes.
Georgia helps her friend scout out local produce boy, Tom, only to discover he has a much hotter older brother whom she has dubbed “Sex God.” When her friend Jas and Tom hit it off, she becomes bitter and jealous and works hard to destroy Tom and Jas’ relationship. Throughout her conflicting feelings for Jas, and Sex God Georgia has to be bothered with going to school, finding out her dad may be a transvestite, and other overly dramatized common occurrences. Of course these things ruin her life beyond repair, and she writes things like “I could kill myself,” or “I could kill Jas.”
Georgia proceeds to go on dates with a couple of guys, though she doesn’t like them, she is just holding out for SG. I have to presume she is just dating them to waste time until her plan to get SG comes to fruition. As relationships between her and her circle of acquaintances change rapidly, her dad moves to New Zealand, she thinks her mom is having an affair, and she conspires to get SG broken up with his current girlfriend so she can have a crack at him. A difficult story to summarize, as there is not a huge amount of story to relate, just “this person did this, I did that, and I hate so and so.” The book becomes merely her overly charged emotional reactions to events, and criticisms of other characters. It is however, a somewhat realistic look into the sick mind of a superficial teenager.
Let’s start off with what the book does well. For starters, the author really gets into the mind of a teen girl, and really seems to hit a lot of developmental themes by doing this. The use of British slang was also fun. OK, that’s about the only redeeming quality of the book in my opinion, because Georgia’s character is such a tosser, that all of these things only served to make the book more painful to read. I don’t think the book was written poorly, it’s just that I cannot tolerate the character doing what I mentioned in my annotation for 200 pages. Georgia is a vapid, superficial, whiny prat, which in my mind disqualifies this book for a nomination. If this book had a story, instead of just internal thoughts, and more than a formulaic girl meets boy, boy is with someone already, suffer-suffer-connive-and-suffer, end up with boy at the end story I could have nominated it. I think the author did a great job making a despicable character, but I certainly don’t think the book qualifies as excellent YA lit. In fact, this should be an instruction manual of how not to be a teenager.
The book started out funny at first, but after 20 pages of hyper-charged hormone harping, it began to get repetitive. I thought that once she had covered this ground, she would move on with her life, but no she stayed there for 200 pages. Quite frankly, I despised Georgia and had to force myself to read this thing from cover to cover. Once I started to despise Georgia, I tried to rethink my mindset, by changing my view to who I was at fourteen or so. No dice. Even as a teen, I would not have liked this book or character. In high school, I avoided girls, and other people like Georgia.
My last thought, (Spoiler alert) this story could have been better if SG, and Georgia actually had some common reason to “fall in love” with each other, but they don’t. They just both think the other is hot, and so have no solid basis for any sort of relationship. If they had anything in common, such as polo, or chess, or even music/movies anything, getting together would make sense. The whole relationship thing with these two comes off as very stilted. She notices him, they hate each other for a while, then just magically end up together. This kind of sends the wrong message to teens, as it shows the only basis you need for a relationship is physical attraction. If the book continued another 50 – 100 pages, I would guess that Gerogia would either A) lose her virginity, or B) break up with SG within a month due to lack of anything in common.
Genre: Humor
1 comment:
Sounds like an awful book a parent would never want their teenage daughter to read and shouldn't for that matter!
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