First I have to say thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury for allowing me to read an e-galley of this book. And this was actually the perfect choice to read after my last read,
Grasshopper Jungle. Because as dense and intense of a read as that was, this was a nice, light, fluffy, easy to read, no brains really needed. And that's a good thing! Believe me! It's definitely chick lit, for teens of course. But in a really great way that I enjoyed because the movies they were referring to, many were from my teen days, but also more recent ones, and recent ones that I also was a big fan of.
There are two main characters, Marijke, (whose name I just could not say right in my head, even after they gave an example at the beginning of how to pronounce it), and Lily. Marijke is a track star, but has kind of lost her group of friends once she got involved with her current boyfriend Tommy. Tommy is kind of new to the school, and is the "hot" guy, the one that it seems everyone is after, or is flirting with, at least as far as Marijke seems to see. And she has a bit of a jealousy problem. As much as Tommy is constantly assuring her that she is the only girl for him, anything she sees, texts, facebook conversations, whatever, seem to have more meaning behind them to her. Lila is the nerdy girl. At least the one that no one really remembers having in classes year after year. She may look familiar, but no one can seem to remember her name. She has a huge crush, from a distance of course, on Joe, the motocross star of the school. One night they both end up at a theater revival showing of
Titanic. Marijke in tears because of another fight with Tommy over her jealousy. And Lily because her mom has once again ditched her in order to go out with another loser, and left her with nothing else to do. When Marijke leaves the theater crying uncontrollably, Lily feels as if she should go after her and see if she needs a friend. And a friendship does develop, however tentatively, as they wonder why love isn't like in the movies. And they decide to help each other get their man using famous bits from movies such as
Say Anything,
Sixteen Candles,
Easy A, and others.
Suffice it to say that hilarity as well as sadness ensues. A cute, fun read as I said to begin with. While I'm good with it, there is one thing that Tommy does that I'm not sure was explained away well enough to my satisfaction, and there was one part with Joe as well. All in all, I liked the ending, and I liked the characters, and I could see it being a fun teen movie in itself, especially with all the pop culture mentions of past teen movies.
