Author: Laurie Boyle Crompton
Genre: YA contemporary romance
Release Date: January 22nd, 2019
Publisher: Blink
Source: ARC from publisher which did not influence my opinion
My rating: 5 stars
Synopsis:
A Groundhog Day meets Pretty in Pink mashup from author Laurie Boyle Crompton, Pretty in Punxsutawney tells the tale of a girl willing to look beneath the surface to see people for who they really are.
Andie is the type of girl who always comes up with the perfect thing to say…after it’s too late to say it. She’s addicted to romance movies—okay, all movies—but has yet to experience her first kiss. After a move to Punxsutawney, PA, for her senior year, she gets caught in an endless loop of her first day at her new school, reliving those 24 hours again and again.
Convinced the curse will be broken when she meets her true love, Andie embarks on a mission: infiltrating the various cliques to find the one boy who can break the spell. What she discovers along the way is that people who seem completely different can often share the very same hopes, dreams, and hang-ups. And that even a day that has been lived over and over can be filled with unexpected connections and plenty of happy endings.
My Review:
This book started out really sweet, and continued in the same manner all the way through. As someone who was a teenager in the 80s and still loves all things 80s, especially the movies from that time period. Sixteen Candles and Weird Science, as well as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, were staples from my middle and high school years. The movies that I watched over and over. While I did watch The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink, the first I enjoyed more when I got older, and the second, well, I'm not actually the biggest fan of that movie. So the fact that the main character in this book, Andie, isn't as thrilled with it either, won me over to her right away. Not to mention her thoughts on the prom dress that Molly Ringwald's character remade in the movie Pretty in Pink totally mirror my own. Of course the awkwardness of Andie's "meet-cute" with Colton, and Tom, is something that sounds like my kind of luck as well.
I also am a fan of the movie Groundhog Day, and I loved that this one was a teen version. The references to movies that Andie pulls to try to help with her experiences is so me, and something I would do, or something my family would do. So to me, this was a perfect story. I liked how she learned that different cliques weren't always the way we stereotype them, and that she kind of started with a group that is almost always vilified, the cheerleaders. The fact that they were such a great bunch of girls really, and the whole Maya house thing, that was awesome! I enjoyed how she seemed to try different groups at first. When she figured out that she wasn't maybe meant to be what she'd originally wanted, or that was at least not the way to get out of her time loop, she went to the goths. And I love that she chose a costume from Beetlejuice! Again, the movie nerd in me loved it. In theh end, the way that she finally ended up breaking the cycle was perfect. It wasn't too easy, or simple, and it took a lot to really get it the right way. A lot of things that she thought that didn't work out the way she planned and led into the perfect night, or ending you might say.
Now, I do wonder if really she would have caught on and tried for a different type of ending earlier, before going with the goths, but if she had, that would have led to a much shorter story, or at least she wouldn't have learned quite all that she did about the different groups. That leads me to another point. I loved how she ended up realizing that the group of people who didn't quite fit into any group, was just as bad, or worse at times, at stereotyping the others. I've seen that. The people that felt picked on, but all I ever saw was them making fun of, or picking on the very people that they said acted that way to them.
I really hope or guess I could say that I would LOVE to see this as a movie. If only John Hughes was still around, because he'd be perfect to make this one.
Laurie Boyle Crompton is the YA
author of the upcoming PRETTY IN PUNXSUTAWNEY (Blink/HarperCollins
2019) as well as ADRENALINE CRUSH (Macmillan/2014, Square Fish/2016),
BLAZE (or Love in the Time of Supervillains), THE REAL PROM QUEENS OF WESTFIELD
HIGH and LOVE AND VANDALISM (Sourcebooks/2013, 2014, 2017). Growing up in
‘Pennsyltucky’ in the 1980s, Laurie couldn't wait to escape rural
life. After saving up her tips from waitressing at a local
greasy spoon at 18 she packed up her acid wash jeans and moved to NY.
Where everyone else had stopped wearing acid wash.
This book started out really sweet, and continued in the same manner all the way through. As someone who was a teenager in the 80s and still loves all things 80s, especially the movies from that time period. Sixteen Candles and Weird Science, as well as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, were staples from my middle and high school years. The movies that I watched over and over. While I did watch The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink, the first I enjoyed more when I got older, and the second, well, I'm not actually the biggest fan of that movie. So the fact that the main character in this book, Andie, isn't as thrilled with it either, won me over to her right away. Not to mention her thoughts on the prom dress that Molly Ringwald's character remade in the movie Pretty in Pink totally mirror my own. Of course the awkwardness of Andie's "meet-cute" with Colton, and Tom, is something that sounds like my kind of luck as well.
I also am a fan of the movie Groundhog Day, and I loved that this one was a teen version. The references to movies that Andie pulls to try to help with her experiences is so me, and something I would do, or something my family would do. So to me, this was a perfect story. I liked how she learned that different cliques weren't always the way we stereotype them, and that she kind of started with a group that is almost always vilified, the cheerleaders. The fact that they were such a great bunch of girls really, and the whole Maya house thing, that was awesome! I enjoyed how she seemed to try different groups at first. When she figured out that she wasn't maybe meant to be what she'd originally wanted, or that was at least not the way to get out of her time loop, she went to the goths. And I love that she chose a costume from Beetlejuice! Again, the movie nerd in me loved it. In theh end, the way that she finally ended up breaking the cycle was perfect. It wasn't too easy, or simple, and it took a lot to really get it the right way. A lot of things that she thought that didn't work out the way she planned and led into the perfect night, or ending you might say.
Now, I do wonder if really she would have caught on and tried for a different type of ending earlier, before going with the goths, but if she had, that would have led to a much shorter story, or at least she wouldn't have learned quite all that she did about the different groups. That leads me to another point. I loved how she ended up realizing that the group of people who didn't quite fit into any group, was just as bad, or worse at times, at stereotyping the others. I've seen that. The people that felt picked on, but all I ever saw was them making fun of, or picking on the very people that they said acted that way to them.
I really hope or guess I could say that I would LOVE to see this as a movie. If only John Hughes was still around, because he'd be perfect to make this one.
TOUR SCHEDULE:
About the Author:
She graduated first in her
class from St. John’s University with a BA in English and Journalism.
Since then she’s written for national magazines like ALLURE, survived a
teaching stint at an all-boy high school, and appeared on Good Day
New York several times as a Toy Expert. And yes, ‘toy expert’ is an actual
profession. Really.
She has lived in places
like Orlando, Florida where she and her husband spent all of their spare time
and money visiting theme parks before moving to the Cotswolds in
England for six months, which was every bit as cool as that sounds. The
Cromptons are now back in New York where their two children resent never
going to Disney.
Laurie occasionally enjoys
hanging out in fields of blooming flowers
and also referring to
herself in the third person.
Website: https://www.lboylecrompton.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lbcrompton
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lbcrompton/
Giveaway:
- Prize: 5 finished copies of Pretty In Punxsutawney by Laurie Boyle Crompton (USA only)
- Starts: 1/7/19
- Ends: 1/16/19
a Rafflecopter giveaway