Review: Laugh-out-loud funny
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 24, 2013
Not Pretty Enough is a hilarious coming-of-age story. We meet 14-year-old Chessie, who has made it her mission to get Lloyd Layton, her as-of-yet unrequited love, to notice her and hopefully fall in love with her. What follows is like a comedy of errors full of cringe-worthy embarrassing moments that make you laugh despite yourself because they're just so horrific (and often horrifically relatable).I could relate to Chessie in so many ways. At her age, I was overweight, didn't have many friends, and more often than not had unhealthy, obsessive crushes on boys. I related to her desire to be noticed, and her tendency to stalk (oh yes, I was a definite stalker back in the day, and I wasn't very good at it either - just ask my childhood best friends), do stupid things to get attention, and really just do stupid things in general. In her mind, she's not pretty enough, she's not smart enough, she's not popular enough, plus she's a total klutz who tends to draw attention to herself in all the wrong ways.While this book will likely appeal to most fans of YA, I'd recommend it more for a younger teen audience, I think. At my age, even though I related to and sympathized with Chessie, there were many times I wanted to shake her...hard. I have the life experience she hasn't had yet and know that boys often aren't worth obsessing over and trying to change yourself to become what you think they'd like. My fourteen-year-old self would have been bffs with Chessie, and I'd likely have been right there egging her on to get Lloyd's attention, while making her help me do stupid things (that wouldn't have seemed stupid at the time, of course) to get my love interest's attention.Like any good romantic comedy, at the heart of it, this book had a good message, especially for teenage girls. I don't want to give anything away, but I really did appreciate that after all she went through and after all the dumb things she did, Chessie really did learn a few important life lessons along the way.Laugh-out-loud funny, relatable, and with a true-to-life message, Not Pretty Enough is another winner from Jaimie Admans. I can't wait to see what she comes up with next!