I bought this book for my teenage daughter. She read it in a day and passed it on to me saying she thought I might like it.
Like it? I loved it.
This is the story of a smart girl who doesn’t fit in. Elise Dembowski makes an academic study of what makes other girls popular and attempts to apply her results. Unsurprisingly, that experiment fails utterly. Depressed and insomniac, Elise walks alone for hours every night until she finds herself at the door of a warehouse party. Now, as a parent, I had to slide over the idea of a 15-year-old girl walking around town at night and stumbling into a rave but I suppose the Famous Five wandered around Kirrin Island unsupervised.
Elise may not be popular but she knows her music. In that warehouse she is at home, in fact, she reigns supreme and so begins her double life.
I thought this book had great messages for a teenager (be your best self, don’t sell your soul for popularity) and great messages for parents (be fair, let them go). There is enough humour to keep the mood upbeat, enough romance to beguile and an absolutely fantastic soundtrack. The author even provides a ‘recommended listening’ list at the end of the book so that you and your husband can spend 3 hours on YouTube reminiscing about your party days. No, of course we didn’t do that.
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