Saturday, April 13, 2013

You Wish (Mandy Hubbard)

Summary:
Social Outcast By Choice Kayla is the type of girl that "doesn't care" what everyone thinks of her, and wears that attitude on her untrendy sleeve. She works so hard at being not-cool that she has one friend in her whole school, and even Nicole is pulling away. Nicole has gotten control of her horrible acne and is dressing more on trend, and even started dating Ben, the boy that Kayla's crazy about (unknowingly, of course, because Kayla can't be bothered to share the fact with her best and only friend). On Kayla's sixteenth birthday, her workaholic event planner mother throws her a bubblegum-and-rainbows style sweet sixteen party (something she'd been begging NOT to have for weeks), only to fill the guest list with clients and people Kayla hardly knows. When in comes time for the cake, Kayla wishes for her birthday wish to come true because "they never freakin' do!" Over the next two weeks, Kayla has to fight off past birthday wishes like a lifetime supply of gumballs, a real-live My Little Pony, and huge boobs, among other things. She realizes quickly that things could go horribly wrong quickly, too, when she remembers that last year her wish was to kiss Ben. She'll do anything she can to stop that from happening, so she doesn't lose her only friend left.

Thoughts:
Kayla has a completely absent father (left them for Italy years ago) and a mother who's never there. But she also has a serious attitude problem, and is so wrapped up in not being a sheep that just goes with the crowd that she's turned herself into a person that no one WANTS to like. She's snide, and she's a little bit rude, and she's entitled. I didn't like the girl for most of the book, and was reveling in her getting what she deserved by having to deal with all the ridiculousness brought on her by the silly wishes. I didn't like antagonistic Janae, the most popular girl in school, any more than I liked Kayla, but when writing a book, I would think the idea should be that your readers root for your protagonist. I simply couldn't care. The book was a mere 284 pages, but it felt like I was slogging through the first two hundred or so. I just didn't care, and nothing that bratty Kayla came out with in pursuit of fixing her imploding life was making me feel anything but annoyance at the girl. She didn't even have more than a five-minute-long conversation with her best friend until the last twenty pages or so and by that point, so much damage had been done that Kayla had to fight to get Nicole to even look at her, let alone speak to her. I'd been looking forward to reading this since the day I spotted it in the bookstore, but it was completely not worth my months-long wait to get it into my hands. Not worth it at all.

Book 10 of 50

Pages: 284
Genre: teenlit, with not much else.
Grade: C-
Would I Recommend?: Only if you're really into stupid teenagers being their entitled selves. Don't bother otherwise.

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