Finished 11- 8-11, rating 4/5, YA, 280 pages, pub. 2001
Book 1 Jessica Darling series
Jessica Darling is facing a crisis of major proportion. Her best friend, Hope, has moved away and left her alone with the rest of their brainless clique. Jessica herself is the top student in her junior class and is known as a goody-goody. Jessica, can’t sleep or stop thinking of Marcus Flutie, the druggie she surprisingly kept from jail. Jessica is a mess, but aren’t most teens at some point?
I don’t read many young adult books even though so many of them look good. For the most part I usually feel removed from the teen experience and this book was no exception. I liked Jessica and her snarky take on high school, but only to a point. She captured the heartbreak of being a teen, but her obsession with losing Hope gave her an excuse to consider everyone else beneath her. I know feeling smarter than everyone else is a high school rite of passage, but Jessica put me off a little with her attitude. The distance I felt from her character may be age related, but it may also be that I never hung around with a Jess in high school so I didn’t quite get her.
Anyway, I thought this book was good and I’d recommend it to older teens. There was swearing, drugs, sex talk and masturbation so I can’t recommend it to younger teens or even older ones who are not mature, I don’t think Jessica is necessarily a good influence.
High school is a hard place to navigate and McCafferty does a great job if capturing that universal experience, which I appreciated even if I had some problems with Jessica.
This was from my personal library. I picked it up (and way too many other books from my wish list) from Border’s for practically nothing.
Stacy's Books 
Hello. My name is Aubrey and I was wondering if you’d like to review my book. You can visit my blog to check it out. Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll send you a copy
There were cliques when I was in high school, but things have gotten so much worse these days. I would never have hung out with a Jess, either (nor would one have hung out with me) but i watched them from afar when my son was in high school and really think they’re rather tragic. The book sounds good to me.
Oh I remember having the i’m smarter and know more attitude, lol. I love the covers of this series.
I loved this one and the next..after that it all started to fall apart!
Tee Hee! I picked up this one and the second one at Borders, too! However, I bought them with my daughter in mind (with the plan of reading them first). I’ve only heard gobs of gush over this series, so I’m looking forward to it. Glad to see that you still thought highly of it despite some quibbles with Jessica.
I dunno this book might give me horrible flash backs to when I was teen. I agree I dont normally read this sort of YA (I prefer adventure and fantasy type YA stories). I thought you did a great review with a lot of honesty.
Hm…I probably won’t pick it up (I definitely didn’t hang out with a Jess in HS). I’m thinking I would not want to read about her at all. Thanks for the review!