Helpful Score: 1
This was a YA novel about a girl and a boy who used to be friends but drifted apart during adolescents. They fight a lot and end up under a spell that switches their bodies so they have to live for about a week in each other's lives. I was excited about the concept and hoping for some insightful commentary about gender roles. Unfortunately, the commentary was pretty amateur stuff and the whole book relied a LOT on gender stereotypes. While I understand the need for this to a certain extent in a book like this, this book just never went deep enough to examine why those stereotypes existed.
It was also painfully obvious that the person who had written the book was a man and didn't have ANY experience with being an adolescent girl. While the main character, Emma, was believable enough--I'd met girls like her and didn't expect her to be a representation of ALL girls--the scenes that were "all girl" scenes were grossly unbelievable. Yes, they felt more like a man's idea of girl interactions than real interactions. The devil's in the details, and the details in this one were just off enough for it not to be believable (example: a bunch of 6th grade girls whipping off their clothes in the locker room and running to the showers. In my recollection, 6th grade showering is PAINFULLY embarrassing, girls hunch over themselves in the locker room because they're self conscious about their bodies, and if they DO shower, they do so with their undergarments on, or holding a towel in front of them till the last minute, etc.) I'd like to see Blake Nelson actually do a gender switch and THEN come back to write this novel.
It was also painfully obvious that the person who had written the book was a man and didn't have ANY experience with being an adolescent girl. While the main character, Emma, was believable enough--I'd met girls like her and didn't expect her to be a representation of ALL girls--the scenes that were "all girl" scenes were grossly unbelievable. Yes, they felt more like a man's idea of girl interactions than real interactions. The devil's in the details, and the details in this one were just off enough for it not to be believable (example: a bunch of 6th grade girls whipping off their clothes in the locker room and running to the showers. In my recollection, 6th grade showering is PAINFULLY embarrassing, girls hunch over themselves in the locker room because they're self conscious about their bodies, and if they DO shower, they do so with their undergarments on, or holding a towel in front of them till the last minute, etc.) I'd like to see Blake Nelson actually do a gender switch and THEN come back to write this novel.
