REVIEW: Adorkable
May. 11th, 2014 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllAdorkable: Sarra Manning Atom 2012
I don’t want to pull apart this book, because I enjoyed it a lot, but I don’t want to praise it too highly either. It made me nostalgic for when I was the girl at school who stood out in her outlandish clothes, who was interested in ‘weird’ things, back in the pre-internet days!
Jeane, whatever is going on at school, has several thousand Twitter followers and a blog that has given her a line to the media and all sorts as the voice of her generation. In typing that, I’m betraying my focus, because the POV is, unusually, shared between heroine Jeane and hero Michael, the school’s golden boy, who is universally popular – clever, responsible, good at football and ridiculously good looking. At school, Jeane is nowhere near as popular, because apart from standing out from the crowd, she has quite the attitude to keep nearly everyone at bay.
What brings them together? The fact that Michael suspects his girlfriend Scarlett has a thing for her maths tutor, Barney, who is Jeane’s boyfriend. Given that Jeane treats said boyfriend more like a dog or a son, while he clearly doesn’t seem to like kissing her, to the reader, it seems like the sooner they break up, the better. We soon realise that Michael too, knows that things aren’t working between him and Scarlett, but pride, among other things, have made him reluctant to confront that.
Interacting with Jeane is a trial for Michael, who is used to everyone liking him, while she can be so scathing she leaves scorch marks, but he’s capable of standing up to her. As both their romantic relationships crumble apart, they find have something in common. The other thing they have in common is, to their surprise, they find they keep kissing each other, something that they both want to keep quiet, being probably the most status-obsessed pupils at their school, for different reasons. Despite themselves, they start to get to know each other, both online and off, while the kissing continues.
As far as I know, the switching POV is rare in Young Adult/teenage books, but I may not have read enough to be a definitive source on that. It worked really well as a means of telling each other, and there’s a running joke about their difference in views on small successes and failures. It becomes quite obvious that Jeane and Michael are a match for each other. He’s impressed by her comebacks and, at some level, attracted to the fact that she isn’t seeking his approval. Whereas he is challenging her ideas that someone who does what the massed herd has approved as cool is automatically not worth her time.
Gradually, we learn alongside Michael why Jeane is so combat-ready and that the life she blogs about everything but is rather screwed up. Things get very dramatic by the end, as Jeane over-reacts to a drunken mistake by Michael, leading to the revelation of a secret. On this one, their difference of views isn’t just an amusing joke for the reader, leaving her vulnerable over a bad Christmas. I found myself getting choky over one Christmas tradition she let slip – this is not a book to be read over that holiday. At the same time, I don’t know that Jeane had to have such an extreme backstory. I suppose Manning wanted to show that the life that some teenagers long to have right now – independence, an ability to eat what you like, wear what you like etc has its cost, but speaking as someone who was reminded of the joys of rooting around in jumble sales, fetes and flea markets upon reading this, I know, it isn’t just trauma that makes people reject the high street and the mainstream!
And it wasn’t wholly realistic, for instance, that Jeane had done all she’s said she had over the past few years and months – some of the references to gigs etc were more for effect than anything. But I was thrilled to find that Molly of Guitar Girl turns up in this book, and is back doing music and enjoying it. On the other hand, Jeane’s impassioned presentation at a conference didn’t impress me much. There is an element of satire to it, I suppose.
I just wasn’t fully convinced by the scale of things with Adorkable, the philosophy that Jeane is peddling online – it doesn’t quite ring true as the description for her lifestyle. Still, the book as a whole it was a decent attempt at conveying what being an internet native (is that the phrase?) would be like (in 2012).
I don’t want to pull apart this book, because I enjoyed it a lot, but I don’t want to praise it too highly either. It made me nostalgic for when I was the girl at school who stood out in her outlandish clothes, who was interested in ‘weird’ things, back in the pre-internet days!
Jeane, whatever is going on at school, has several thousand Twitter followers and a blog that has given her a line to the media and all sorts as the voice of her generation. In typing that, I’m betraying my focus, because the POV is, unusually, shared between heroine Jeane and hero Michael, the school’s golden boy, who is universally popular – clever, responsible, good at football and ridiculously good looking. At school, Jeane is nowhere near as popular, because apart from standing out from the crowd, she has quite the attitude to keep nearly everyone at bay.
What brings them together? The fact that Michael suspects his girlfriend Scarlett has a thing for her maths tutor, Barney, who is Jeane’s boyfriend. Given that Jeane treats said boyfriend more like a dog or a son, while he clearly doesn’t seem to like kissing her, to the reader, it seems like the sooner they break up, the better. We soon realise that Michael too, knows that things aren’t working between him and Scarlett, but pride, among other things, have made him reluctant to confront that.
Interacting with Jeane is a trial for Michael, who is used to everyone liking him, while she can be so scathing she leaves scorch marks, but he’s capable of standing up to her. As both their romantic relationships crumble apart, they find have something in common. The other thing they have in common is, to their surprise, they find they keep kissing each other, something that they both want to keep quiet, being probably the most status-obsessed pupils at their school, for different reasons. Despite themselves, they start to get to know each other, both online and off, while the kissing continues.
As far as I know, the switching POV is rare in Young Adult/teenage books, but I may not have read enough to be a definitive source on that. It worked really well as a means of telling each other, and there’s a running joke about their difference in views on small successes and failures. It becomes quite obvious that Jeane and Michael are a match for each other. He’s impressed by her comebacks and, at some level, attracted to the fact that she isn’t seeking his approval. Whereas he is challenging her ideas that someone who does what the massed herd has approved as cool is automatically not worth her time.
Gradually, we learn alongside Michael why Jeane is so combat-ready and that the life she blogs about everything but is rather screwed up. Things get very dramatic by the end, as Jeane over-reacts to a drunken mistake by Michael, leading to the revelation of a secret. On this one, their difference of views isn’t just an amusing joke for the reader, leaving her vulnerable over a bad Christmas. I found myself getting choky over one Christmas tradition she let slip – this is not a book to be read over that holiday. At the same time, I don’t know that Jeane had to have such an extreme backstory. I suppose Manning wanted to show that the life that some teenagers long to have right now – independence, an ability to eat what you like, wear what you like etc has its cost, but speaking as someone who was reminded of the joys of rooting around in jumble sales, fetes and flea markets upon reading this, I know, it isn’t just trauma that makes people reject the high street and the mainstream!
And it wasn’t wholly realistic, for instance, that Jeane had done all she’s said she had over the past few years and months – some of the references to gigs etc were more for effect than anything. But I was thrilled to find that Molly of Guitar Girl turns up in this book, and is back doing music and enjoying it. On the other hand, Jeane’s impassioned presentation at a conference didn’t impress me much. There is an element of satire to it, I suppose.
I just wasn’t fully convinced by the scale of things with Adorkable, the philosophy that Jeane is peddling online – it doesn’t quite ring true as the description for her lifestyle. Still, the book as a whole it was a decent attempt at conveying what being an internet native (is that the phrase?) would be like (in 2012).
