Words cannot express how much I loathe this book. I really cannot stand it. What makes it bad is that while I was reading I kept hoping things would get better or go somewhere interesting, and at the end, I just felt empty. What makes it worse is that the more I think about the book, the less I like it. I hate when that happens. When books make me think, I want it to be because they have done something right, not because they have done so much wrong.
The plot is basic
Mean Girls fare. Paski moves from New Mexico to California and falls for the hot guy that is, of course, already going out with the school's queen bee. She has to deal with fitting in blah blah blah basic stuff you already know.
I thought the book was going to be way more interesting than it turned out to be because there are hints of magical realism in the book. Paski's grandmother is a psychic and Paski herself talks about her connection with nature and has this amulet that gives her vibes about who to trust and who not to trust. Also, Paski is a mountain biker and her dad is a cartoonist, which gives both of them something I haven't seen much of in lit before.
It's really too bad the book sucks so much.
Valdes-Rodriguez tries really hard to get at some fundamental truths. For example:
I smile at them, and they turn away. This is the weak spot in mean girls. They don’t know how to deal when you’re actually nice to them.
The problem is that Paski is never actually really nice to the "mean girls." There's nothing in the book whatsoever to show that her niceness unsettles Jessica (the queen bee) or her friends. Paski does befriend one of the girls, but as soon as she does, she drops the one true friend she had.
There are a ton of rushed/unexplained storylines in the story. There's something going on with the neighbors that's never fully explained. Paski just "knows" that Chris is awesome and that she should/could love him, but there's no reason for the reader to think that. She also "knows" that the one not-really mean girl is okay, even though all they do is go shopping together, like, once.
Jessica turns out to be a one-dimensional cartoon villain with no real depth, even as Chris says that there's more to her than it seems. No, really, there isn't. At the end, she is cutthroat and ruthless with no real reason to be. It's unrealistic and takes so much away from the story.
Paski is almost too perfect, even though she does have her moments:
How shallow, I know, but inside every deep, psychic girl, I would bet you there’s a shallow moron just waiting to come out.
Which is one of the reasons I kept reading. There are enough of these moments to make it seem like maybe, just maybe, everything is going somewhere.
Unfortunately, Paski is a bit too much of a
Mary Sue. She's pretty but doesn't know it, but that's okay because every other character tells us! (She looks like
Rachel Bilson, btw.) She does know she's a good bike rider, but, of course, she immediately catches on to motocross. She wins over Jessica's friends and boyfriends, her father becomes rich, her neighbors thinks she's fantastic, etc. Jessica is the only thorn in her side. However, since she's an unbelievably flat villain, in the end, she poses no real challenge.
Read it to see how ridiculous it is or skip it to avoid being annoyed at how ridiculous it is. I'd choose the latter.
