Review: Breaking Up

Breaking Up – Aimee Friedman, illus. by Christine Norrie

At the start of their Junior Year (at a stand in for New York’s LaGuardia Arts) four friends begin to drift apart as their priorities and personalities change. Told from the perspective of artistic Chloe, the comic is meant to be a visual and textual record of the year created by her after the fact. Her beautiful best friend MacKenzie is hell bent on popularity and will do everything in her power to make sure her current group of friends don’t mess that up for her. So when Chloe begins a friendship with handsome but geeky Adam, MacKenzie immediately puts “mean girl” pressure on her to break it off.  As each of the girls try to seek their own path, the group pressures them in turn to stick to the status quo.  Chloe feels the most pressure to conform and begins lying to and avoiding her friends.

I was attracted to this book by its art: heavy black lines, nice mix of boxes and larger illustrations escaping boxes. And while reading it, I was impressed by the wit of those drawings and how much they added to the story.  And I was really impressed by how sophisticated the book’s portrayal of teenage, female friendship is.  Chloe is the narrator (and “author”) and one can sympathize with why she does what she does, but she still shares in the blame for everything that goes wrong.  There is romance, for all of the girls, but their friendship is the focus of the story.

One off note is that this is called “a Fashion High Graphic Novel.”  Fashion High is what Chloe and her friends call her arty and fashion obsessed school, but it’s not a school that deals with fashion (there is one of those in New York) and it’s not the focus of the book.  It seems only like a cynical marketing ploy.  Though if it means there will be more, I’m happy.

I’ve had people tell me that they can’t tell if I actually like the books I’ve reviewed, and that’s probably because I’ve only moderately enjoyed most of them.  And only disliked one or two.  So I will explicitly state, I really really enjoyed this book.  I think it’s a great readalike for fans of P.L.A.I.N. Janes and other Minx books.  Two of the professional reviews that I’ve seen have put it as appropriate for 15 and up or grades 6-8.  I would split the difference and say 12 and up.  Some of these kids are having sex, and making out is pictured a few times, but I know a nine-year-old who claims to have enjoyed it.

Review: Dream Girl

Dream Girl by Lauren Mechling

Tonight should be the first night of my honeymoon, but instead I’m at home reading and blogging about books.  This time tomorrow I should be much more happily installed in our pretty little beach house.  While not enough to ruin my trip, it’s enough to ruin the fun buzz of anticipation I’ve been building up ever since we started planning it.  I just have to remember that by this time tomorrow, Hurricane Hanna will be a distant memory.

And on to the book!

Claire has a French father who teaches French at NYU and a mother who is a ghostwriter and gossip magazine astrologist.  She lives in the faculty housing where I went to Marie’s party the other night and “accidentally” gets accepted into Stuyvesant, though the name of the super-competitive public school has been changed.  Her parents take her out of her alternative, expensive school and plop her into unfriendly and alien territory.  The only person she meets who isn’t too obsessed with extra-curriculars to hang out after school is another new girl, Becca, who is preternaturally poised and self-assured.  She’s also secretly the heiress to the Heinz fortune, though again the name has been changed.  Most of the plot and set-up is standard bubble-gum realistic fiction fare.  There are even trips to Bendels and Aspen, though the rich kids in the book aren’t jaded or bratty.  There’s a romantic interest (I think we’re supposed to like him, but he does come off as a bit scummy) who’s got a gorgeous and bitchy girlfriend, and there’s an evil ex-best friend who’s turned into the school mean girl.

But the twist is that Claire, Claire Voyant, has been having these crazy dreams about things that start popping up in her real life.  She learns that the women in her family tend to be “gifted” and that she can use this power to help the people around her and influence the course of her own life.

What any of this has to do with the cover art, I’m not sure.  Other than the model looking kind of ducky, as Claire is described as being.  I don’t know that I enjoyed the book that much, but would definitely recommend it to younger teen girls without reservation.  It’s take on New York is very good.  And some of the characters were interesting.  But all the pieces and characters and plots didn’t fit together smoothly enough.  It seems like the first in a series, and maybe I did enjoy it enough to read the next.  Though I’d probably be happier rereading Kiki Strike, I can absolutely imagine a 13-year-old girl loving this book and wanting to be Claire.