This book's central question seems to be - can you change your life even though you have made mistakes in the past. As adults we know we can though it can be difficult. As a teenager, Deanna Lambert is struggling with this question. After being caught in an indescetion as a 13-year-old with her brother's best friend by her father, Deanna has had to live with being "that" girl. She's now in high school and even though she is not like "that" anymore, she still lives with it daily. As summer comes she starts to explore more of who she is and how what she has done affects everyone. There is her family - her brother who is her best friend, his girlfriend and their baby daughter. She longs to be a family with them. There is her mother who tries hard to keep the peace in the family but works so much she's hardly there and there is her father who has not really looked at Deanna since that fateful night. Deanna also has two good friends. As the summer progresses Deanna learns a lot of things - about her family, her friends and especially herself. It's a wonderful and quick story to read and I highly recommend it to all - from teenagers to adults.

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Reviewed by Amber Gibson for TeensReadToo.com

Have you ever done something that you wish you could take back? Something that changed your life forever?

We've all been there. We've all done something that we regret. Just like all of us, Deanna was once caught doing something that she wasn't proud of. Unfortunately for her, it almost ruined her teen years. Just one dumb relationship, sprinkled with naiveté and trust, and suddenly Deanna finds herself with the vulgar label of the school slut. It wasn't what she'd asked for; she'd only ever been with one guy. But the stories just won't stop. Like a horrible rerun of a hated sitcom, it seems like everywhere she turns, Deanna is confronted with what she did one night in a boy's car--and the fact that her father caught her doing it.

Deanna's story is touching, and the worst example of how one event can seem to define a person's life. But like the fighter she is, Deanna tries to move on and just live her life as normally as possible, with her two best friends and her family. But her family life isn't exactly picturesque. Her older brother, his wife Stacy, and their baby daughter are living in the basement. Her father is always arguing with Stacy, and Deanna thinks that he hates Stacy almost as much as he hates her since that fateful night when Deanna's life fell apart. Her mother loves her and tries so hard to give Deanna the care that she needs, but somehow it doesn't quite make up for the fact that their family is just barely scraping by. On top of all that, Deanna doesn't know if she'll ever make it out of Pacifica, a little dump of a town in the otherwise glamorous state of California.

After sophomore year is over, Deanna is stuck at home all summer. To get out of the house and keep her busy, she gets her first job at a little local pizza parlor. There, she discovers that the same boy who came so close ruining her life three years earlier is now her co-worker. While she struggles to understand her feelings towards him, she is also struggling at home to live with the strange family arrangement and someday find a way out.

Over the course of the summer, Deanna learns a lot about herself, her friends, and her family. By the time she returns to high school as a junior, she has a much better understanding of who she is, and that nobody else can define her. Sara Zarr did a wonderful job of creating Deanna, such a vulnerable character whose thoughts and actions are so believable. Never again will I judge somebody from a story I once heard about them, after seeing Deanna's account of just how much that can hurt.

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Deanna Lambert was just 13 years old when her father caught her having sex in Tommy Weber's car. Now, she's a rising high school junior and hates her life, living with her spineless mother, her father who hates her, her brother Darren, his girlfriend Stacy, and their unplanned pregnancy, baby April. It's bad enough that her home life sucks without considering how she's always teased in school, called a skank and a slut and a lot of other bad things, all for what happened with Tommy Weber, the jerk who then turned it into a humiliating story for everyone to hear.

It's hard to imagine life getting any harder. But it does. Desperate for money (that she plans to help Darren, Stacy, and April move out with), Deanna takes a job at the local run-down pizza place. The owner, Michael, is nice--and gay--enough, but it's her coworker that really makes her nervous: Tommy Weber, two years older but no less nightmarish. And then she has to go ahead and mess things up with Lee, her only female friends, and Lee's boyfriend, Deanna's best friend Jason.

Perhaps, Deanna begins to think, she is destined for a life in her town of "Pathetica," married to a loveless disgusting man and begetting screwed-up kids. However, there's support and silent encouragement from all people...even the ones Deanna thought would never love her again, or whom she would never like again.

STORY OF A GIRL. Such a simple and ambiguous title. Could be about anything, right? However, Sara Zarr spins Deanna's heartbreaking story of teenage mistakes and love lost wonderfully. Everyone in Deanna's world becomes real to the reader as well. Deanna's tale reminds us that, while life can sometimes seem not worth living, there's always a light at the end of the tunnel.

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Story of a Girl, by Sara Zarr, is about a girl named Deanna and her attempts to deal with difficult situations in her life, such as being labeled a slut at school, her father's apparent rejection of her, and the fact that her two best friends are dating each other, leaving her feeling jealous. But it's mostly about forgiveness. I enjoyed the character of Deanna, as well as the other characters in the book. Zarr did a nice job making the story feel realistic, for the most part. I only gave it three and a half stars because of a few things; namely, the fact that the male character in the story (Tommy) doesn't face the consequences of his actions. That Deanna is treated as a slut by her own family, rather than a victim of a crime. It upset me that the adults in this book never truly came to the realization of what actually took place, never actually talked to Deanna about what happened. What happened was a crime, even if the participants themselves (Deanna and Tommy) didn't see it that way. Although the idea of adults failing kids is a realistic one, I hate reading it. I wanted vindication. Justice. something. Also, I got confused at the end as to what was actually said to Deanna's friend Lee and felt that the issues between Deanna and Lee were never solved. The ending didn't feel like much of an ending, either. So, this book was shy of making 4 stars for me (I liked it okay, but didn't love it and am not sure I'd recommend it).

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