This was a Digital Book Club selection chosen by the only other member of the club (shout out to Candi!) and it was really a cute book. I felt like I really needed a book like this after the heaviness of Swamplandia!
Brief Description: Our main character, Petra, is a 13 yr old girl in Wales during the 70s...and she is OBSESSED with David Cassidy. The first half of the book tells us about Petra and her group of 13 year old friends. Their favorite magazine, The Essential David Cassidy magazine, is offering a chance to meet David for the lucky girl that answers all the questions correctly in the Ultimate David Cassidy Quiz. The last half of the book has Petra as a 38 year old recent divorcee who stumbles upon a letter (that her mother hid from her) telling her she won this contest to meet David Cassidy.
The plotline towards the end starts to get a little predictable, but what keeps this from your standard chick-lit book is the feelings that the author managed to get out of me as I read the book. First, we focus on the obsession that these girls have with DC. I personally didn't have an all-consuming star crush when I was younger, so I can't 100% relate, but I do remember that feeling of wanting THAT guy to notice you and how your whole world revolved around those emotions. And I think this is kinda relevant to understanding why little girls today are so manic over Justin Beiber.
The dynamics of this group of young girls is equally as interesting. In this instance, I could 100% relate. Imagine how you felt with your group of girlfriends at age 13. There was the ringleader that everyone pandered to, coupled with the overwhelming urge of trying to fit in but still stand out...but not stand out so much that you were considered "weird." The author told this part of the story so well that there were times that I would get mad at Petra for not standing up for herself...but thinking about it, I probably wouldn't have stood up for myself either. And there may have been an instance where I texted my fellow Digital Book Club member about what a bitch a certain character was being.
As I said earlier, it was the emotion that I felt reading the book that really resonated with me. I could relate to Petra and her friends in some way because I remember what it was like to be an angsty 13 yr old. It sounds like a silly reason for liking a book, but I think it says a lot about the author for being able to pull those feelings out of her readers. The same can also be said for the 2nd half of the book when we learn about Petra's relationship with her daughter. The universal push/pull that happens between mom and her teenager is also really relate-able. I thought it was particularly interesting because we find out about this from the mom's point of view. Being the self-absorbed 13 yr old we all were, we don't really think about how our actions make our parents feel.
It's also worth mentioning that we learn about the David Cassidy obsession from another angle...a fan magazine writer, Bill, who poses as David Cassidy (this is apparently common for fan magazines).
Bill composed the contest/quiz that Petra won. I'm on the fence about how I feel about Bill. It was nice to have his take on the David Cassidy craze, but at the same time I think that he is what made this book a little bit of a cliche. And there were times I felt that his chapters were rambling on and on and on.
Overall, this was a very fun read. Something good to read when it's raining outside (ahem...San Francisco weather) or beside the pool this summer.
Rank: B
P.S. I liked this writer so much, that I downloaded her first Bestseller "I Don't Know How She Does It." I'll keep you posted on how that one turns out.
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