Review: The Taming of the Tights

The Taming of the Tights (Misadventures of Tallulah Casey #3), by Louise Rennison. The goodreads summary:

Gadzooks! It's another term at Dother Hall for Tallulah and her mates. But can they keep their minds on the arts with all those boys about?... After the thing-that-will-never-be-mentioned last term, Tallulah is keen to put all thoughts of Cain behind her. But that seems like that the last thing he wants. Their performing arts college may have been saved by Honey's mystery benefactor, but for how long is anyone's guess. So will Tallulah finally get to wear those golden slippers of applause or will Dr Lightowler swoop down on her glory days? And with Seth and Flossie forever snogging, Vaisey and Jack loved-up and Phil and Jo fondly biffing each other can Tallulah resist the call of her wild boy? Don your craziest tights and Irish dance your way to some surprising and hilariously unexpected answers...

I love this series. I really do. It’s pretty much become my go-to for when I need something that will make me laugh without requiring any brain power. Tallulah’s just so great. I love how un-angsty she is—she’s genuine and innocent and fairly naïve, and while those things don’t always work for me, they work for me here because Tallulah is straight up hilarious, and I adore her optimism and how she’s not the moody, annoying type of teenager. I cannot stop smiling when I read these books. Especially any scene that involves her knees (I know that sounds weird, but trust me, Tallulah’s knees are the best).

This third book is about the same quality as the second, which is to say not as good as the first book but still pretty great. In this book, Tallulah is sorting out her feelings about Charlie and Cain, while trying to figure out why Dr. Lightowler hates her. Not to mention she’s also still trying to redeem herself after the Sugar Plum Bikey fiasco. For the whole Charlie vs. Cain thing, I know I’m probably supposed to like Charlie the best, but really, I’m all for Cain. I mean, come on—Tallulah calls him the “Dark Black Crow of Heckmondwhite.” How am I supposed to resist that? Especially considering the fact that he opens up for a brief moment in this book, and we get to see a little bit of who he is behind that cocky bad-boy exterior.

Tallulah’s group of friends remains as awesome as ever, with Ruby, as usual, being my favorite of the bunch. How a 11-year-old can be so cool, I don’t know. But when I grow up, I want to have as much spunk and “Northern Grit” as Ruby.

Overall, a lot of fun. A good way to amuse yourself for a couple of hours when you’ve got nothing else going on.

Rating: 4 / 5

Review: Let’s Get Lost

Let’s Get Lost, by Sarra Manning. The GoodReads summary:

Isabel is the girl who rules the school with an iron fist and a gang of minions who do her bidding. Her friends are scared of her, her teachers can't get through to her, and that's just the way she likes it. With her razor-sharp edges and tall walls, nothing gets to Isabel and no one, but no one, is ever going to discover her dark, sad secrets. Then she meets Smith. And Isabel learns that sometimes when all the expectations and pressures are too much, you just need someone to help you get lost.

So here’s the thing. Isabel isn’t really a likeable character. Like, at all. She’s sarcastic and bitchy and closed off and frustrating. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But the thing is, despite all that, I cared about her. Even when I was at the point where I was going to chuck the book across the room if she did one more selfish or self-destructive thing, I sympathized with her. Her emotional pain was so obvious, and while that didn’t make her any less frustrating of a character, it made me want to read through to the end to make sure that poor girl got some resolution. And man, does the author make you work for that resolution. Isabel doesn’t budge an inch or let go of one ounce of her steely control for, like, 98 percent of the book. So when she finally does, oh my goodness does it feel worth it. I felt like a giant weight was taken off my shoulders as well as Isabel’s.

Isabel’s relationship with Smith I’m a little meh about. I appreciated that he was the one person Isabel felt safe around and the one person willing to call out Isabel on all her crap, but Smith remained a little too one dimensional for my taste. I think the book was so centered on the development and slow revelation of Isabel’s character that Smith’s character development fell by the wayside. As a result, I never felt like I truly got to know him.

Overall, though Isabel pushed my patience almost to the breaking point, I just couldn’t give up on her and her story. I didn’t want to. Which is the thing that I kinda really adore about Sarra Manning’s books. That ability to keep me invested in characters I don’t relate to much at all.

Rating: 3.5 / 5

Review: Adorkable

Adorkable, by Sarra Manning. The GoodReads summary:

Jeane Smith's a blogger, a dreamer, a jumble sale queen, CEO of her own lifestyle brand, and has half a million followers on Twitter. Michael Lee's a star of school, stage, and playing field. A golden boy in a Jack Wills hoodie. They have nothing in common but a pair of cheating exes. So why can't they stop making out? This novel is about an unlikely relationship, but it's also about roller derby, dogs on skateboards, dogs on surfboards, dogs doing any form of extreme sport, old skool hip hop, riding your bike downhill really fast, riot grrrl, those boys you want to kiss but punch in the face at the same time, dyeing your hair ridiculous colors just because you can, stitch 'n' bitch, the songs that make you dance, the songs that make you cry, being a bad ass, cake, love, death, and everything in between.

So before I read “Adorkable,” I’d read Sarra Manning’s two adult romances: “Unsticky,” which I fell head over heels for, and “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me,” which I enjoyed but which didn’t inspire quite the same enthusiasm as “Unsticky.” But they both were good enough experiences that it made me curious about Sarra Manning’s YA books, since she has quite a few out. Not exactly knowing where to start, I decided to start with her most recent YA, “Adorkable.”

The main thing I’ve noticed in Manning’s books so far is that even though her characters can drive me up the wall and completely frustrate me, I inevitably come to care for them by the end of the book. The same holds true in “Adorkable.” It took me about halfway into the book to really settle in with the characters. Up to that point, neither Michael or Jean was winning me over. Jean especially was hard for me to handle at first. She’s bossy, stubborn, argumentative, and condescending. But as I slowly got to know her and her situation better, I admired her more and more until by the end I was rooting for her. She still has all the same flaws at the end that she does in the beginning, but I couldn’t help loving her for not apologizing for who she is. Michael, for most of the book, comes off as just as boring as Jean thinks he is. Despite half the book being from his perspective, he’s not particularly memorable. But towards the end, he comes to life a little more and I liked getting a glimpse of who he is under his nice-guy persona.

The thing that kept me reading, even before I started liking the characters, was the development of Jean and Michael’s relationship. They’re complete and total polar opposites, so it was a lot of fun to watch dislike turn to lust turn to tolerance turn to friendship turn into something more. And it wasn’t all in that nice linear fashion that I just outlined either—just when you think Jean and Michael are making progress, things tend to go wrong, and even when the two of them are getting along, they tend to argue practically nonstop. So their relationship had me riveted, because I didn’t want to miss seeing if and how it would all work out between them.

I still had a few issues with the book though. The main one was that the story didn’t grab me at all until about a third of the way through. The only thing that kept me reading past that point was my previous good experiences with Manning’s other books. I also had a hard time suspending my disbelief about Jean’s life: I just didn’t quite buy that her parents would let her live by herself or that she would’ve gained quite so much internet fame. But the awesome thing about Sarra Manning is that she always gets me invested in the characters despite the imperfections of the book.

Overall, I liked “Adorkable” enough to try reading more of Sarra Manning’s YA novels. While I didn’t think “Adorkable” was a YA masterpiece or anything, I enjoyed it. Plus, it had a slightly different feel from a lot of other YA contemporaries—maybe because it’s British—that I found refreshing.

Rating 3.5 / 5