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Very LeFreak
Very LeFreak
Author: Rachel Cohn
Very LeFreak has a problem: she's a crazed technology addict. Very can't get enough of her iPhone, laptop, IMs, text messages, whatever. If there's an chance the incoming message, call, text, or photo might be from her super-secret online crush, she's going to answer, no matter what. Nothing is too important: sleep, friends in mid-conversation, ...  more »
ISBN-13: 9780375850967
ISBN-10: 0375850961
Publication Date: 1/11/2011
Pages: 320
Reading Level: Young Adult
Rating:
  • Currently 5/5 Stars.
 1

5 stars, based on 1 rating
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review
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GeniusJen avatar reviewed Very LeFreak on + 5322 more book reviews
Reviewed by Breanna F. for TeensReadToo.com

Very LeFreak (real name: Veronica) is a freshman on scholarship at Columbia University who is addicted to technology. She's constantly on her laptop doing anything and everything she can think of. She's attached to every single type of music that she has on her iPod, and she's practically conjoined to her iPhone. She's always sending out meme's during class or making random playlists, and of course talking to her online crush, El Virus. They've been talking for quite a while and love to play out crazy fantasies with each other, but they have never seen each others faces. Very also cannot seem to stop moving. She's constantly throwing parties and getting completely trashed. She doesn't seem to have an off button.

Eventually her roommate, Jennifer (to Very it's Lavinia); her sort of ex-friend, Bryan; her RA, Debbie; and the Dean stage an intervention, letting Very know that all of her technology usage is getting way out of hand: i.e. she's addicted. Bryan has confiscated her laptop, and her iPod and iPhone are in the hands of Lavinia and Debbie. Very thinks this is ludicrous: how the heck can she live without her technology?

She gets over the whole "being told you're an addict to technology" thing pretty quickly, actually. But when one of her friends who wasn't really big on the intervention in the first place gets her use of a laptop, some information gets out to her which leads to Very practically killing Bryan.

She wakes up in the psych ward with Lavinia and her Aunt Esther over her. She is told that she will be going to a sort of rehab place called ESCAPE, which stands for Emergency Services for Computer-Addicted Persons Everywhere, in Vermont. Very is livid at first, but once there for a week she actually starts to open up to her therapist and all of her emotions start coming out. But then a sort of weird twist of fate occurs and her progress could start spiraling downwards.

First off, there was a lot of very mature material in this book so I wouldn't recommend it to younger readers. Some of what went on I thought was a little unnecessary to be putting in a book for teens, but I suppose some people like that. Despite the unnecessary material, this was an interesting read. I've never thought that someone could get that out of control with technology. But once Very starts pouring out everything that has happened to her throughout her life, it makes sense why she'd want to escape into the virtual world. The girl definitely had a tough life. But of course, getting way too involved with her technology ended up making her life all the more difficult.

VERY LEFREAK was overall a great book. The element of surprise plays a fairly big part. Many parts I never saw coming, which made the book really great, and the ending wasn't really lackluster, either. If you've read Rachel Cohn in the past, you'll be sure to like this book, and even if you haven't it is sure to be enjoyable.
skywriter319 avatar reviewed Very LeFreak on + 784 more book reviews
Columbia University freshman Very LeFreak is a vivacious, confident girl, the life of the party and eternal schemer of outrageous activities. True, her busyness makes her rather scatterbrained, non-academically inclined, and a bit of a heartbreaker. But that doesn't really matter, because her heart's taken by El Virus, the mysterious man she "met" on the Internet and is madly in love with. Trouble is, Very hasn't heard from El Virus in weeks and months, despite the fact that she is constantly checking her phone, email, and IMs to see if he's contacted her. When her technology addiction begins to seriously negatively affect her real life, Very decides to go on a mission to discover the whereabouts of El Virus.

VERY LEFREAK is an unfortunate disappointment by a highly respectable author. It contains the chatty, witty, and pop culture reference-loaded writing of her previous books, but lacks cohesion and the ability to make us empathize with the characters.

Very is an appealing character because her thoughts--and therefore her narration--are refreshingly fast-paced, modern, and slightly scattered in the way that many 21st-century teens are, whether we admit it or not. She is unlike any character I've encountered in literature before, with her ever-ready repertoire of pop culture, random tangents, and connections we'd never make ourselves, but which seem perfectly logical coming from Very's mind.

However, the fact that we are in Very's head so much makes it extremely difficult for us to grasp what is going on in the story. Very's observations are certainly interesting, but there is a lack of narrative cohesion tying together Very with the people in her life. The little we glean of Very's friends is so colored by Very's desires for who she wants them to be that we don't get even close to a solid picture of who they are. While I understand that this may in fact be the manifestation of the typical limitations of fiction writing--everything we know about the characters, we know through a biased lens--the paradox doesn't completely translate into reader enjoyability and comprehension here.

Similarly, there seemed to be a lack of plot in VERY LEFREAK. The book is so much a dissection of Very's thought processes that it oftentimes forgets to effectively move the story along via relevant events, conversations, and even overarching themes. The technology addiction that the book's synopsis claims Very suffers from actually doesn't even play a major role in the book--which disappointed me, as I thought it was an interesting and pertinent topic that could've better been explored. I read about half of the book before realizing that absolutely nothing pertaining to character growth had happened yet. One can get away with that in an adult book, but for YA fiction, that just might be the kiss of death.

Overall, I believe VERY LEFREAK might be an interesting read for writers and academics curious about issues regarding fiction's metalanguage--are the supporting characters really incohesive, or is that just a product of the intensely close third-person narration of this book? Can a story be a story without character development or plot?--but I fear it may be a struggle for the YA audience it's being marketed at. Appreciators of well-written, character-driven novels might give this one a go and find that they enjoy it immensely.


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