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Review: Adorkable by Sarra Manning

Adorkable by Sarra Manning
Published by Atom



Jeane Smith is seventeen and has turned her self-styled dorkiness into an art form, a lifestyle choice and a profitable website and consultancy business. She writes a style column for a Japanese teen magazine and came number seven in The Guardian's 30 People Under 30 Who Are Changing The World. And yet, in spite of the accolades, hundreds of Internet friendships and a cool boyfriend, she feels inexplicably lonely, a situation made infinitely worse when Michael Lee, the most mass-market, popular and predictably all-rounded boy at school tells Jeane of his suspicion that Jeane's boyfriend is secretly seeing his girlfriend. Michael and Jeane have NOTHING in common - she is cool and individual; he is the golden boy in an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt. So why can't she stop talking to him?

***

I loved Adorkable. It was sweet and funny with a lovely storyline with a brilliant lead character and left me with loads to think about when I was done. I now want to go out and hunt down everything else written by Sarra Manning and devour it in one huge marathon reading session.

I loved Jeane. She is the sort of girl I always wished I'd had the guts to be at her age. She's dorky and quirky and quite happy in her own skin being whoever she wants to be, wearing whatever she wanted without caring what other people thought. Not only that she shares her ideas across the world via twitter and her blog to show how proud she is about being individual. Her blog is so successful that she gets paid to go to conferences all over the world and is consulted about simply being the individual she is.

I loved the relationship that builds up between Jeane and Michael as the story goes on. I particularly enjoyed seeing Jeane through Michael's eyes and seeing how his opinion of her changed as the story progressed especially by the time you get to the scenes at Christmas. I thought their relationship was really heartfelt and sweet. I must say the way in which teenage sex was portrayed in this book. I've said before how annoyed I get when the impression given in YA books is that all girl under 21 who even consider having sex with even their long term boyfriend is seen as a slut. I'm not for a minute promoting underage slutty sex but I do think have more realistic portrayals of teen relationships in YA can only be a good thing in teaching teens what adult relationships can be like in turn give them some more self respect.

I loved getting under the skin of Jeane more as the story went on and finding out who she really was under her quirky suit of armour that she hid behind the majority of the time. I particularly liked it when she had her stint of being normal and seeing what it would be like to fit in with the crowd.

Highly recommend to all those readers like me who are bored to tears with all the paranormal and dystopian fiction we are being inundated with at the moment.

Comments

The more reviews of this I see the more I want to go out and buy a copy, fab review :)
I agree - Adorkable was totally sweet and funny, but it also had a really good message to it. I loved Jeane! She was so unique and funny, and despite her faults, I couldn't help liking and admiring her.

If you'd like to see my review of Adorkable, it's here

Catherine :)
Great review, I really loved how the whole sex thing was doen too, it felt realistic and not judged, I cant fault this book at all and will be recommending it to everyone!