Title: My Almost Epic Summer
Author: Adele Griffin
Pages: 170 p.s (Hardback)
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
HB price: $15.99
Rating: ***/5
I really liked this book, and if I didn't have to use whole stars in my rating system, this would be a 3.75, so it's above average.
Nothing much happens in this book, like epic, as the title says. Just a very believable story about Irene, a girl with a big dream, and her summer before ninth grade.
My favorite part of any book, the characters: there weren't a lot. I can count the main and semi-main characters on my two hands, and a lot of these characters were underdeveloped. But it is only a 170 paged book, and meant to be a light summer read. I really liked the main character, Irene, but she had her odd moments. She wants to be a hair stylist in L.A. when she grows up, even though she's so bad at helping to run her mom's that her own mother fires her! She reads classic books like "Lolita", which has been on my reading list to get for a while, or "Jane Eyre," which is what I liked so much about her. We were actually a lot alike , and that's really important in a story. When she reads these books, she sketches the heroines' hairstyles in her notebook, which she calls "Heroine Heads," for inspiration in her future dream stylist place.
I hated the other main character, Starla, so much! And Irene just obsessed about her throughout the whole book- how beautiful she is, and her attitude, etc. It's kind of like Regina George and Cady in Mean Girls. She hates her, but can't stop thinking about her. And in Irene's case, haunting her blog.
Overall, even though important characters were severely underdeveloped, this author had great use of literary elements, which made it more interesting to read, and partially made up for the others.
