Rating: 4.5
What it's about:
Mara Valentine is in control. She's a straight-A senior, a vegan, and her parents' pride and joy. She's neck-and-neck with her womanizing ex-boyfriend for number-one class ranking and plans to kick his salutatorian butt on her way out the door to Yale. Mara has her remaining months in Brockport all planned out.
The plan does not involve having V, her slutty, pot-smoking, sixteen-year-old niece -- yes, niece -- come to live with her family. Nor does it involve lusting after her boss at the local café or dreaming about grilled cheese sandwiches every night. Before Mara knows it, things are spinning wildly out of control....
Vegan Virgin Valentine is the gripping story of an overachiever who learns to get over it and get a life. -taken from Barnes&Noble.com
My thoughts:
Myself being a vegan....I ran across this book, Vegan Virgin Valentine, every time I did a vegan book search. So one day I said what the heck and bought the book. I am not disappointed! It's about Mara Valentine who is an overachieving straight A high school senior who is a vegan. She dreams about cheese every night. She has already been accepted to Yale and is taking college courses on top of her high school work. Her main goal is to be valedictorian at her graduation. Then things start to fall apart. Enter V Valentine, Mara's 16 year old niece. V moves in with the Valentines while her own mother is out wandering the globe looking for.....something. V is the polar opposite of Mara. She's a slut, a stoner and she gets bad grades. And to top it all off...she doesn't do any extracurricular activities. So it pretty much goes without saying that Mara and V are at each others throats from the get go. Partway through the book they start to rub off on each other. Mara falls in love with her 22 year old boss who owns the coffee shop she works at, drops some of her college courses she was planning on taking in the summer and she realizes that there is more to life than being valedictorian. V gets the starring role in the school musical, quits smoking cigarettes and gives some serious thought to college. Vegan Virgin Valentine is about being comfortable in your own skin and doing what feels right for you and only you. Mara learns to let go and loosen up, realizing on the way that being successful is relative. This is teen lit and it did get a little sappy in parts, a little too sweet but I really enjoyed reading this novel from Carolyn Mackler. Now I'll have to go pick up the sequel.
No comments:
Post a Comment