As a middle school student I was OBSESSED with Tavi Gevinson. I used to follow her blog pretty religiously. The small town that I live in doesn't have a big enough art scene to satisfy my weird hipster self and I'm much too fat to fit in vintage clothes, so I live vicariously through Tavi and her cool-weird clothes and indie songs and vintage scrapbooks. I mean, Tavi introduced me to early Proenza Schouler which is like the best Proenza Schouler (their latest seasons SUCK and are basically rehash of their early seasons) and for that I'm forever grateful. Jeane Smith of Adorkable is basically a British version of Tavi. She's a quirky girl with short grandma-grey hair who runs this blog called Adorkable, which is basically a place where she posts everything dorky, dog videos, and rant about the injustice in the world. Jeane is outspoken, brash, and does not own even a pair jeans. She gets her clothes from jumble sales and vintage second-hand stores instead of Topshop. In short, she's everything that an ordinary teenage girl is not.
Enter Michael Lee. Michael is a half-Chinese boy who's the Perfect Boy (tm). He is tall and good-looking, has good grades (wants to go to Cambridge), captain of the debating club, head of student council, center-back (sp?) of the football team, and devoted son to his parents. Michael shops from Jack Wills and American Eagle and his hair is styled into a fauxhawk (!). In short, he's the typical "normal" teenage boy.
Michael and Jeane's initial contact is through their cheating exes. I absolutely abhor cheating and I'm prepared to hate these exes, but Barney and Scarlet, Jeane's and Michael's exes respectively, are actually sweet and make me sympathise with them. Anyway. Somehow one thing leads to another and Michael and Jeane ends up in the school cupboard eating each other face's off. They embark on a pseudo-relationship which is just them meeting up from time to time to have sex and snog and generally does boyfriend-girlfriend things but they are not a couple, thank you very much. And I'm like:
Their chemistry is OFF THE ROOF YO. Seriously. They're always bickering about how Jeane is so weird and Michael is so square but then they bond about bands and geeky stuff and I'm like JUST FUCKING REALIZE IT YOU GUYSS.
What I like about this book is that it's hella realistic. Michael is grossed out at first by Jeane's weirdness but I know he likes his banter with her. Vice versa with Jeane. Their relationship with each other is super rocky at first, because Jeane is a stubborn mule who can't accept people who are different than her (irony, thy name is Jeane Smith) and Michael is a bit self-conscious about how associating with "weirdo Jeane" will tarnish his popularity. But then Jeane slowly reveals her insecurities and Michael is there to support her, man. He's a nice kid, basically, and is totally there for Jeane whenever she wants. He'll bitch and moan in the inside, but he'll hold Jeane's hand all the time.
One of my gripe with this book is the proliferation of YOUTHFUL slangs. Like, "totes" and "blates" (????) and the fucking embarrassing text messages complete with adults-trying-to-sound-youthful text abbreviations. I'm seventeen years old and these slangs got me like:
And I don't know Twitter is so important that when your friend neglects that he's been talking to you in Twitter it's a legit reason to break up with him lmao
But those are small complaints due to my advanced age, so okay I'll let it slide. It's still a fun, quirky, realistic book, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to read a sweet and good YA series.
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