Review: Normalish
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 13, 2013
Right away, I loved the name Normalish. And after reading the book, I think it is the perfect title. Normalish kind of reminded me of Forgiving Trinity by Liz Reinhardt. It is a modern coming of age story for a 15 year old girl. The book read kind of like a dairy and had plenty of ups and downs. And through it all, it just seems so real. Normal in the way that everyone's like is not really normal at all.Stacy starts the book out by listing everything in her life that she doesn't have. I should have paid a little more attention to that list at the time because it is like a preview into the rest of the book. One thing after another happens to Stacy and to the people around Stacy and I was really interested in seeing everyone's reactions and how they dealt with things. What I liked about Stacy was that she was so real. She was just like a normal teen. Everything was heightened. Every guy was a true love, everything was vastly important. But, here's the real kicker- she didn't seem annoying or petty to me. It all just worked for her. Margaret Lesh did a great job of making very realistic characters.Normalish also shocked me more than a few times. I couldn't believe two of the big things that happened. (and, nope i'm not going to tell you what they are. :p) These were real emotional events and honestly, I'm surprised that the majority of the characters handled the day to day life as well as they did.  I do wish we saw a little bit more of adorable Chad at some parts in the middle. He is just way too cute to have him fade into the background during the middle.The writing of Normalish was a real treat. I enjoyed Margaret Lesh's writing style. The chapters were all varied in length but most of them were pretty short. That's why it reminded me of journal or diary entries. Sometimes the book was choppy, sometimes the book was more flowing. All of it matched the events of the story. It was really well done.Fans of realistic ya and some of the more raw and gritty, but still cute, contemporary books, Normalish would be a great addition to your bookshelves. Especially where nothing is "normal", Normalish is great!*Disclaimer- I got a copy of this book for free in exchange for my honest review. I was not compensated for my review.