Adorkable
Londoner Jeane Smith might seem to have it all: her own anticonsumerist lifestyle brand (Adorkable), a job writing for foreign teen magazines, her own apartment while her family travels the world, and tons of Twitter followers. Despite it all, though, she is deeply lonely and insecure, and she can’t blog her way out of the facts that she isn’t properly caring for herself, and her boyfriend has been cheating on her with cutie Michael’s girlfriend. Jeane veers between competent, insightful observations about her generation and utterly self-destructive behavior, including hiding that she has fallen for Michael. What might come across as a fluffy, light teen novel is a surprisingly deep story about a girl who is struggling to define herself in a postrecession world full of posers and followers. The brands and trends may quickly date this book, but the characters’ authentic, late-teen angst and snappy, believable dialogue, as well as Jeane and Michael’s experiences, give this one legs. Jeane might not be the twenty-first-century Bridget Jones, but she is awfully close. Grades 10-12. --Erin Downey Howerton