Mini Reviews: Confessions of an Angry Girl + Adaptation

CONFESSIONS OF AN ANGRY GIRL
Louise Rozett
Contemporary Young Adult
272 pages
Harlequin Teen
Available Now
Received from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Rose Zarelli, self-proclaimed word geek and angry girl, has some confessions to make…

1. I'm livid all the time. Why? My dad died. My mom barely talks. My brother abandoned us. I think I'm allowed to be irate, don't you?

2. I make people furious regularly. Want an example? I kissed Jamie Forta, a badass guy who might be dating a cheerleader. She is now enraged and out for blood. Mine.

3. High school might as well be Mars. My best friend has been replaced by an alien, and I see red all the time. (Mars is red and "seeing red" means being angry—get it?)

Here are some other vocab words that describe my life: Inadequate. Insufferable. Intolerable.

(Don't know what they mean? Look them up yourself.)

(Sorry. That was rude.)

MY THOUGHTS
Confessions of an Angry Girl is a surprising story, the title and synopsis causing our bodies to brace as we prepare to enter the volatile mind of a grief-stricken fourteen year-old girl, but what we find instead is an extraordinarily relatable young woman lost in a sea of change. While there are times when Rose does lash out in anger, for the most part she’s quiet, absorbing blow after blow until she reaches the point her body and mind can no longer sustain another hit without a verbal or physical defense, and by that time young Rose has embedded herself so deeply under our skin we’ve no other choice but to back her every play even when we know no good will come of it.

Though Rose doesn’t likely see herself as strong, we can’t help but see her as such, admiring the strength it takes for a freshmen in high school to not be swayed by the pressure of those around her, instead choosing the more difficult path of non-conformity despite the loneliness that results from a road less traveled. Rose’s journey through her freshman year is emotional and engaging; a pleasant deviation from what was expected, however, it does end abruptly and with little warning, leaving those of us enjoying it via e-reader wondering if somehow our device caught a chapter-eating virus that robbed us of the story's conclusion. Though this is a series and obviously Rose’s story will continue in the next book, the ending knocks our enjoyment level down a peg or two.

Rating: Overall - 4/5 Ending - 3/5

ADAPTATION
Malinda Lo
Young Adult/SciFi
400 pages
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Available Now
Received from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Reese can’t remember anything from the time between the accident and the day she woke up almost a month later. She only knows one thing: She’s different now.

Across North America, flocks of birds hurl themselves into airplanes, causing at least a dozen to crash. Thousands of people die. Fearing terrorism, the United States government grounds all flights, and millions of travelers are stranded.

Reese and her debate team partner and longtime crush David are in Arizona when it happens. Everyone knows the world will never be the same. On their drive home to San Francisco, along a stretch of empty highway at night in the middle of Nevada, a bird flies into their headlights. The car flips over. When they wake up in a military hospital, the doctor won’t tell them what happened, where they are—or how they’ve been miraculously healed.

Things become even stranger when Reese returns home. San Francisco feels like a different place with police enforcing curfew, hazmat teams collecting dead birds, and a strange presence that seems to be following her. When Reese unexpectedly collides with the beautiful Amber Gray, her search for the truth is forced in an entirely new direction—and threatens to expose a vast global conspiracy that the government has worked for decades to keep secret.

MY THOUGHTS
Adaptation is one of those stories that sets the gears in our minds turning before we even open the first page, the possibility of government conspiracies and cover ups causing us to have a handful of theories as to what we think might happen in this tale right off the bat, and as we continue reading we can’t help but analyze every thought and action to see if it fits into one of our imagined scenarios. In this first installment, Ms. Lo keeps the science fiction element of the story fairly subtle, allowing our imaginations to run wild as to what exactly happened to Reese and David in the desert, so it’s likely that even those readers who are not huge on the genre will be able to enjoy the labyrinthine mystery that is the United States government and their many and varied secrets.

While trying to uncover the details of David and Reese’s stint in a top secret facility keeps us utterly riveted to the pages, the romantic relationships (yes, plural) create a minor hitch in an otherwise smooth ride. From the beginning we understand Reese is attracted to David, the tension between them present and formidable even in the midst of their harrowing journey from Phoenix to San Francisco, leading us to believe theirs is a relationship that will be explored throughout the remainder of the story. However, not long after their return to California, Reese quickly enters into a relationship with a young woman to whom she feels a magnetic pull, something that throws us off a bit given Reese at no point previously has had even a passing romantic thought for someone of the same gender. Her physical relationship with Amber progresses shockingly fast as well, with very little examination of any confusing or conflicting feelings one might think would be present for someone who has just made a life-altering discovery about herself.

Despite the few flaws with the love triangle between Reese, David and Amber, Adaptation is an engaging first installment that leaves us itching to jump on the internet and see what fascinating conspiracy theory sites we can stumble upon.

Rating: 3.5/5