Helpful Score: 1
V Valentine, the insuppressible anti-hero from VEGAN VIRGIN VALENTINE, is back in a story about her own growing up and falling into love. All her life, V has flitted from one boy to the next at breakneck speed, never stopping to allow any possible emotions to cling to her. Then one fateful hockey game she crosses paths with Sam. Somehow things with him are different.
Could it be that Sam is V's first real boyfriend? V isn't so sure. And given her own mother's history with numerous men, she's pretty certain that love, the kind of emotion that causes you to remain faithful to only one person, doesn't exist. So she constantly pushes Sam away, denying her feelings and, finally, permanently wrecking any relationship they had.
Ashamed, V decides to take a cross-country car trip by herself to visit her mother, whom she has not seen for a while now. Her adventure is nothing spectacular, but it's the thinking that V does on the trip that causes her to realize how she's different from her mother, and how she's grown and is, just maybe, ready to open up to love.
While not one of my favorite books of hers, Carolyn Mackler's novel GUYAHOLIC is nevertheless entertaining, a heartwarming overture for a girl whom, despite her faults, we love. It's impossible not to cheer for V as she survives her car trip and learns about herself in the process.
Could it be that Sam is V's first real boyfriend? V isn't so sure. And given her own mother's history with numerous men, she's pretty certain that love, the kind of emotion that causes you to remain faithful to only one person, doesn't exist. So she constantly pushes Sam away, denying her feelings and, finally, permanently wrecking any relationship they had.
Ashamed, V decides to take a cross-country car trip by herself to visit her mother, whom she has not seen for a while now. Her adventure is nothing spectacular, but it's the thinking that V does on the trip that causes her to realize how she's different from her mother, and how she's grown and is, just maybe, ready to open up to love.
While not one of my favorite books of hers, Carolyn Mackler's novel GUYAHOLIC is nevertheless entertaining, a heartwarming overture for a girl whom, despite her faults, we love. It's impossible not to cheer for V as she survives her car trip and learns about herself in the process.
Reviewed by Angie Fisher for TeensReadToo.com
Vivienne Vail Valentine - no wonder she needs a nickname. "V" is her name, and guys are her game.
A game she learned well ...from her mom. That would be the same mom who dumped her at her grandparents house to live, which, by the way, was probably the best gift she ever gave her one and only child.
To say V has trust issues would be like saying the sun can burn. She shimmies from one guy to the next with the grace of a goddess, leaving nothing but broken hearts in her wake. That is, until she finds herself on the wrong end of a hockey puck, bleeding in the lap of a fellow fan.
Head wounds bleed, by the way, a lot. And Sam Almond didn't flinch when he used his sweatshirt to plug the hole in her head that would later require eighteen stitches.
Sam didn't consider himself a hero, and V didn't want to think of him as such, because it scared her. He scared her. He was different.
When the opportunity arises for her to return to her old ways, she convinces herself it's the way to go, it's who she is; it's who her mother made her. But at what cost?
Vivienne Vail Valentine - no wonder she needs a nickname. "V" is her name, and guys are her game.
A game she learned well ...from her mom. That would be the same mom who dumped her at her grandparents house to live, which, by the way, was probably the best gift she ever gave her one and only child.
To say V has trust issues would be like saying the sun can burn. She shimmies from one guy to the next with the grace of a goddess, leaving nothing but broken hearts in her wake. That is, until she finds herself on the wrong end of a hockey puck, bleeding in the lap of a fellow fan.
Head wounds bleed, by the way, a lot. And Sam Almond didn't flinch when he used his sweatshirt to plug the hole in her head that would later require eighteen stitches.
Sam didn't consider himself a hero, and V didn't want to think of him as such, because it scared her. He scared her. He was different.
When the opportunity arises for her to return to her old ways, she convinces herself it's the way to go, it's who she is; it's who her mother made her. But at what cost?
