The Way You Make Me Feel by Maurene Goo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A very simple teenage summer story.
This is not a book to read if you’re looking something insightful and ‘timeless’ (as it might have been described on the cover), or something to learn things about people from. At least not if you’re older than 12.
It’s a simple story. As a glance on teenage life, I would even say simplified.
The protagonist is a ‘softly rebellious’ girl who is supposed to find better things to care for in life by the end of it. And that’s all there is too it.
The protagonists is also, in fact, extremely difficult to emphasize with. And not even really because of her behavior, which is very questionable as it is, but because of her language and how she expresses herself. All the ‘yeesh’ and ‘sheesh,’ and her other reactions were generally very annoying. I don’t think I could have emphasized with her no matter how old I was.
Her relationships were either all very shallow, or very shallowly described. People who were supposed to be her friends were very easily dismissed less than half-way through and it seemed very strange. She just suddenly ‘gets’ a love interests who is ‘very hot and rich’ and who cares much more about her than she about them, and that’s that.
Were we supposed to care about cultural details? Or about food? I honestly couldn’t tell.
There’s not really enough in this book to hate it, though.
If you’re looking for something very simple and light to take your mind of things, and can read shallow stories without feeling a need to question everything or get annoyed with it, then this book maybe is what you’re looking for.
Keina Daria 