Friday, May 4, 2012

My Life Undecided

My Life Undecided
Jessica Brody
296 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus, Giroux
Source: Library
★★★☆☆



You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Brooklyn considers herself "decisionally challenged" so when she accidentally winds up in jail for some bad decisions, she decides to give up on choosing for herself.  Instead, she starts a popular blog where she describes her situations and lets the Internet public decide for her.  But when it comes to her new love triangle, she's not sure the public knows what's best.

What I liked about the novel was how realistic it was.  The teenagers talked like teenagers and the adults spoke like adults.  There were a plethora of popular teenage activities in the novel, everything from typical girly primping, to rugby tryouts, to debate team.  And of course a game of Truth or Dare.

What bothered me about the book, however, was Brooklyn's character, who describes herself as "decisionally challenged."  To me that means someone who can't choose an outfit or a lipgloss color or where to go on vacation.  For Brooklyn it just means a lack of common sense leads to bad decisions, like the time she hosted an underage drinking party in her mother's model home, gets drunk, and tries to make fajitas with the fake rubber vegetables in the model kitchen, which of course leads to the whole place burning to the ground.  That's not "decisionally challenged," that's just plain stupid.  My only solace to Brooklyn's character was the ending of the novel.

Three stars - I liked it but I didn't love it.  I though the concept was kind of cool, but ultimately Brooklyn's character came off as just plain stupid and lacking common sense.  The book had it's moments, however, and I would recommend picking this one up either at a discount or from the library.

No comments:

Post a Comment

I enjoy reading each and every comment, thanks for leaving them!

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.