Wednesday, June 22, 2011

review: My Life Undecided by Jessica Brody

pub date: June 7, 2011
publisher: Farrar, Straus, Giroux
pages: 320
appeals: humor, romance, friendship, queen bees, contemporary, realistic fiction
content: Sex was mentioned briefly a few times, there were also a few swear words, not many.

thoughts:
I really enjoyed Brody's sense of humor, in this book as well as in her first YA, The Karma Club. I love books that make me laugh, and this one definitely did that.

What I liked the most was Brooks voice. It was intelligent, self-deprecating, humorous (as stated earlier), and likable. I liked her and was rooting for her success the whole book.

The progression of the plot was great. Brooks is horrible at making wise decisions and has gotten into much trouble because of it. So she starts a blog where she will post every decision she needs to make and let her readers decide what she should do. Her readers don't see things the way she does and Brooks ends up doing a lot of things she doesn't want to do, but does them because she promised she would. It was great. I loved how her reader's responses affected her life.

This story has a love triangle, which has become a turn off for me of late, but it was wonderful in this book. This love-triangle was done right. There was no lightning bolt of love. There was no overboard passion. There were two boys that liked the same girl. The relationships developed naturally and over time. It was a fun romance without the characters needing to kiss each other every page or long expositions on why Brooks needed the boy(s). Good stuff.

At one point Brooks was asked how many boys she'd had sex with. Everyone was surprised that she hadn't slept with anyone. She's only fifteen. I'm was surprised they thought she'd slept with one person, the fact they thought she'd slept with multiple boys kind of horrified me.

If you like realistic romance then pick up this book!

summary:
PLEASE READ THIS! MY LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!



Okay, maybe that was a bit melodramatic, but I’m sorry, I’m feeling a bit melodramatic at the moment.

Here’s the deal. My name is Brooklyn Pierce, I’m fifteen years old, and I am decisionally challenged. Seriously, I can’t remember the last good decision I made. I can remember plenty of crappy ones though. Including that party I threw when my parents were out of town that accidentally burned down a model home. Yeah, not my finest moment, for sure.

But see, that’s why I started a blog. To enlist readers to make my decisions for me. That’s right. I gave up. Threw in the towel. I let someone else be the one to decide which book I read for English. Or whether or not I accepted an invitation to join the debate team from that cute-in-a-dorky-sort-of-way guy who gave me the Heimlich Maneuver in the cafeteria. (Note to self: Chew the melon before swallowing it.) I even let them decide who I dated!

Well, it turns out there are some things in life you simply can’t choose or have chosen for you—like who you fall in love with. And now everything’s more screwed up than ever.

But don’t take my word for it, read the book and decide for yourself. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll scream in frustration. Or maybe that’s just me. After all, it’s my life.

1 comment:

Andie Z said...

Great review! I recently received an ARC of this book from the publisher but I have so many books on my TBR list that I wasn't sure whether I would ever get to this one. Your review just pushed it a little higher up on the list a little, so thanks! :)