Tell Me Three Things

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The women in LA all have taut skin, the kind pumped full of injectables that render them ageless, just as believably forty as seventy.” This antifeminist manifesto just wouldn't be complete if we didn't touch on some plastic surgery-shaming. Two minutes into the book, and I already laughed, smiled like an idiot, and snorted. All I was thinking was, "Why is this book so adorable????" When Thursday rolls around, Jessie’s too nervous about her date to eat. Agnes isn’t convinced that Caleb is SN and at lunch, Dri notices that Gem and Liam aren’t sitting together. After school, Caleb cancels their date since Liam just broke up with Gem because of Jessie. Jessie is confused, especially when SN then texts her to celebrate her upcoming trip. She doesn’t want to tell him how much he hurt her feelings. On the plane, Jessie thinks about how good it’ll be to get Scarlett’s take on everything, but when Jessie arrives, Scarlett is angry and upset. She accuses Jessie of not listening at all since she left. The party that night is disastrous. Scarlett and Adam disappear, presumably to have sex, and Jessie messages SN while she’s drunk and calls him out on canceling their coffee date. She wakes up the next morning in Scarlett’s bed. Scarlett really just wants to talk about Adam—they haven’t had sex yet because Scarlett is too afraid, and Scarlett needs advice. Scarlett makes it clear that she does want to hear about Jessie’s life; she just needs Jessie to listen to her too. To demonstrate, she goes through Jessie’s new messages, in which Dri and Agnes confirm that Caleb’s sister is alive—he’s not SN. Scarlett thinks he’s Liam. I read this in summer 2016 and three-starred it. I remember it as being fun/fluffy/fine/cute/easy/etc. Good contemporary words.

There are three boys- and although they all have different good qualities, only one will be worthy of rooting for ;) The girl-on-girl hate and the not-like-other-girls got on my nerves. I've successfully avoided books with these tropes for a while (yay to that!), but it was annoying here.

Within the standard-issue teen romance is a heartfelt, wryly perceptive account of coming to terms with irrevocable loss when life itself means inevitable change. What age level would be appropriate? At least teenager. Some mentions of sex, drug, and drinking. Not much details on anything. The protagonist's romance is very PG.

Maybe I’m becoming one of those cynical readers who criticizes everything (*screams*) but finding a realistic, relatable contemporary that has a good message and is enjoyable to read just seems so difficult lately. I've loved so many books in the past years, a fair amount of them contemporaries. And many of the contemporaries I've super enjoyed - like Faking Normal, Emily and Oliver, What We Saw - the best I could give them were4 stars. The 5 stars that I've awarded is reserved for books like Anatomy of a Misfit - books with such amazing narration that feels not only real but also so very authentic to the point that the teenage me of yesterday comes out of her hidden depths just to cry out, "This character is so me. Her feelings, her fears, her insecurities are so me. SHE IS ME!" I’m pretty big on the contemporary genre. It’s my feel good genre, it’s my get-me-out-of-a-reading-slump genre, it’s my help-me-in-drowning-in-feels genre. But lately . . . it’s been letting me down. I kept trying to make excuses for it - that it was just supposed to be a lighthearted, funny book, but I couldn’t get past it. Guess it's a personal thing. I might just be wearing my grumpy pants today. All of the humour relies heavily on melodrama and stereotypes, which is something that's never really appealed to me. I like more subtlety, and humour based on truth - because, if you ask me, there ain't anything funnier than reality. Tell Me Three Things was too heavy-handed to make me laugh.

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I felt the ‘all the boys fall for the new girl’ thing was a little over done. Whether intended or not. Whether stated or not. It just felt that way; and it annoyed me to no end. But the relationships, be they potential romances or not, were all very cute and adorable. I actually had a lot of fun reading ‘Tell Me Three Things.’ So that's the romance. And I mentioned the characters. I also loved the "tough-issue" story, how heartbreaking and inspiring the story is. Loving a parent, and then the other (to a stepmother), moving cross-country, starting over in a school filled with people that look down on you... nothing comes easy, for Jessie. I love her strength of character, and how she grows as the story continues. This book isn't so gritty and difficult to read that a non-contemporary person like me would stop reading. No, this book was beautiful and achingly sweet to read. Bottom line is if you are a fan of teenage romance movies, you’ll be thinking this would be perfect for the big screen and you’ll feel like this almost the entire time you’re reading . . . .

I will continue to power through it—all the stagnant, soul-crushing grief—but it will never be okay that my mom is not here. That she will not be at my high school graduation; that she will never give me the lecture, and I won't be able to play along and pretend to be embarrassed and say, Come on, Mom; that she will not be there when I open my college acceptance letters (or rejections); that she will never see who I grow up to be—that great mystery of who I am and who I am meant to be—finally asked and answered. I will march forth into the great unknown alone."

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Two years following the death of her mother, Jessie’s father springs the fact that he has eloped on her. Jessie has to leave everything she knows in Chicago to move in with her new stepmother and her teenage son. Things aren't going so well for Jessie it appears that her step brother seems completely disinterested in her. The kids in her new school seem to have known one another forever. While her father is just too happy to notice how hard this all is on her. It’s simply the new girl in school scenario done to perfection. Everything about Jessie is wrong. At least, that’s what it feels like during her first week of junior year at her new ultra-intimidating prep school in Los Angeles. It’s been barely two years since her mother’s death, and because her father eloped with a woman he met online, Jessie has been forced to move across the country to live with her stepmonster and her pretentious teenage son, and to start at a new school where she knows no one.