Review: Beautiful YA Contemporary
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 14, 2013
Normalish is a brilliant story about a girl starting her first year of high school while trying to figure out what "normal" really is. She struggles through problems within her family, with friends and even some romantic issues. Normalish is one girl's insight to high school and explains how she survived her freshman year.I was hesitant to pick this up, if I'm being honest. I had noticed it before I joined a blog tour for it, and was feeling pretty "ehhh" about it. But when the sign-ups were released, I decided to give it a try. I'm so glad that I did. While this isn't the best written novel, I immediately fell into it. Normalish is extremely hard to put down. In fact, once I started it, I didn't put away my kindle under after I had finished it. I kept saying, just three more chapters and I'll put it down... I ended up reading the entire novel in one sitting. It was just... great.Freshman year hasn't started out so well for fifteen-year-old, Stacy. Her best friend has fallen in with a new crowd and has pretty much abandoned her. The guy she reluctantly now considers her best friend has developed feelings for her. Her sister is going crazy. And her love life is a complete mess. As the story progresses, the readers will watch as Stacy falls in love, gets her heart broken, struggles in math, loses friends, gains friends and ultimately learns to be be happy with herself.I'm a sucker for novels with controversial subjects. When the issues are tackled appropriately, novels with controversial issues can easily become some of my favorite books. Normalish is definitely included in that. I thought Ms. Lesh above and beyond the norm of mental illness. I think the view and descriptions were handled perfectly for the story. The details weren't tasteless, but felt like they were being viewed from a young person's perspective - which they were.The layout of Normalish is different than your average contemporary novel. It is not only made up of romance(s), but it deals with social, mentally and familial issues as well. Some of the the plot points are typical, like boy trouble. Others are ones that aren't exactly new, but are dealt with in a way that I, personally, have not read before, i.e. the appearance of the main character's sister's mental illness. It was great to see an original contemporary novel. Everything felt new and I didn't know what was going to happen next.I loved Stacy. I could see myself in her character. Maybe that's why I connected so well with this book. She has a realistic personality. She acts like a teenager, sounds like a teenager. She's boy crazy. She's witty. She has great humor, but has a darker side of her that is hard to see. Some authors work too hard at making their characters a certain age and those characters end up being too mature, sometimes too immature. I don't believe this author has that problem. In fact, Ms. Lesh's characters stuck with me for weeks after I finished the novel. I don't think there was a character that I didn't appreciate as part of the story. I liked that they all added something to it.I would definitely recommend this to fans of contemporary young adults novels. Normalish provides everything you would want in a good contemporary story and will leave its readers feeling.