Tuesday, November 23, 2010

It Started With a Dare

It Started With a Dare by Lindsay Faith Rech
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010
305 pages
YA; Contemporary
3.5/5 stars

Source: Netgalley

Summary: CG has moved to a new school and sees this as her opportunity to make herself over as a popular rebellious girl with a mysterious background.  Along the way she is entangled in two romantic relationships and is enmeshed in all of her lies.

Thoughts: Wow-does CG lie a lot! I really liked her at the beginning (she lives in southeastern Pennsylvania, roughly where I'm originally from) and she was funny and an outcast.  But then she starts lying and lying and lying.  She starts up an online flirtation with her English teacher; she starts up a flirtation with her friend's older brother, who has a girlfriend; she lies about having been an alcoholic; she shuns the one girl who genuinely likes her; she lies about her relationship experience; etc.  I was disgusted most particularly with the way she brushed off how the affair with the teacher was inappropriate and she whined a lot about all of her lying without doing anything to remedy it.

At the end, her parents find out mostly everything and punish her. I am somewhat uncomfortable with her parents' invading her privacy; although she is a minor (she turns 16 toward the end of the book), I do believe that she is deserving of some privacy.  Of course she was doing awful things with little thought to the consequences and she definitely deserved punishment.  I'm turn on this aspect.  She ends the book pretty happy with herself, but I wasn't.

Overall: Unlikeable main character with a few funny turn of phrases and an almost redemption

Cover: It's very cute with the cherry lollipop.

1 comment:

  1. CG sounds awful.:) She is such a little liar, and just to be popular. I hope she learned her lesson, arlight.

    Good point about privacy. Sometimes parents go overboard.

    I like the girl. The girl looks like she's just thought of some new mischief.

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