I received this book free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review in any way.
Rose Zarelli, self-proclaimed word geek and angry girl, has some confessions to make...
1. I'm livid all the time. Why? My dad died. My mom barely talks. My brother abandoned us. I think I'm allowed to be irate, don't you?
2. I make people furious regularly. Want an example? I kissed Jamie Forta, a badass guy who might be dating a cheerleader. She is now enraged and out for blood. Mine.
3. high school might as well be Mars. My best friend has been replaced by an alien, and I see red all the time. (Mars is red and "seeing red" means angry—get it?)
Here are some other vocal words that describe my life: Inadequate. Insufferable. Intolerable.
(Don't know what they mean? Look them up yourself.)
(Sorry. That was rude.)
It's been a while since I was 14, never mind in comp school, so maybe the life of fourteen year old Rose shouldn't have appealed to me as much as it did. But it did appeal to me, and I ended up loving it. Rose kind of reminded me of me when I was that age, she has no clue about hair or makeup, not too bothered about popularity, and to top it off had a stupid crazy crush on a boy. There are obviously some more extreme circumstances that Rose faces, that luckily I have never had to face, but nonetheless the familiarity warmed me to her immediately, after only a few pages I loved her.
It's not hard to emphasise with Rose, her father passed away and she's shoved into the big bad world of high school, her friends are changing around her, and she's clearly struggling to find where she fits in. Throughout this experience Rose's narrative was really enjoyable, aided by the humour and observations that Rose made, and at the end of the book I came away liking Rose.
I'm the first to admit that when it comes to the American grade terminology I'm clueless. Jamie Forta is older than Rose, and older than others in his year. But as I don't now what age he
should be, his age was lost on me. I'm not one to advocate a fourteen year old dating a twenty-one year old, but as I have no clue how old Jamie was (although I'm pretty sure he's younger than twenty-one) I can't really say how I feel about their age gap, but what I can say is that to me Rose felt like a mature fourteen-going-on-fifteen year old, so an age difference was not really obvious.
Regina becomes Rose's bully, scribing hateful things in hot pink nail varnish throughout the school. In my opinion Rose should have said something to someone, because the girl was nasty and she needed to be stopped. That said though, I liked where the end of the book was going and I'm looking forward to seeing what goes off in book two!
Confessions of an Angry Girl is a book I really enjoyed, Rose definitely grew as a character and it was lovely to see. I'm looking forward to even more character and plot development in book two,
Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend.
'Confessions of an Angry Girl' by Louise Rozett
5 Stars
Labels: 2015, 2015 Contemporary Challenge, 5 Stars, Book, Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend, Confessions of an Angry Girl, Louise Rozett, Published 2012, Review, Young Adult
