Review:
Appropriate scale
This book proved to provide a pretty detailed list of ten things you could do but probably shouldn’t, such as underage drinking, and having unsupervised parties. It’s a personal choice, of course, and April hasn’t really had the ability to make those choices for a long time. So another thing that you could do but probably shouldn’t is anything that has the potential to limit your freedom or your choices. Teenagers make poor choices- that’s probably the understatement of the century. But most of the teenagers I know understand fairly well the consequences behind their decisions. So I guess that even if you’re doing things you probably shouldn’t, you know pretty well what’s behind the doors you’ve chosen to open. It’s almost an inevitability that eventually, somehow, someone will find out, or alternatively, you’ll wish you never had in the first place.
Summary:
When April gets the chance to live with her friend Vi, unsupervised, she jumps at the chance, especially since she has had a ten o’clock curfew since 10th grade. The only problem? April’s dad will never agree to it. So Vi makes a fake email account for both April’s father and Vi’s mother, giving her mother April’s dad’s fake email, and April’s dad gets Vi’s mother’s fake email.
Not too long later, April’s moved in with Vi. She gets money every month, for gas, groceries and rent. April discovers that she does not enjoy grocery shopping, but does enjoy the products, and that she loves cats when she is given a new kitten. They also purchase a hot tub (they call it the Hula).
April and her boyfriend Noah had been planning to have sex for a long time, but when April gets scared of getting pregnant, she goes to Planned Parenthood and gets birth control, forcing Noah to wait until it kicks in. They decide to do it on Valentine’s day, and Vi loses her virginity the night before – Friday the thirteenth.
April’s cat gets run over and she borrows three thousand dollars from a potential drug dealer in order to pay for his surgery.
April’s best friend Marissa comes to stay with them when her parents tell her she can’t go to Israel that summer with her boyfriend (Marissa goes to Jewish Camp).
The night of April’s birthday, Vi decides to throw a wild party and charge admission and snack costs in order to help pay back said drug dealer for the cat.
The drug dealer turns out not to be a drug dealer (he’s a babysitter), April gets an STD, breaks up with Noah, moves out of Vi’s, and goes to live with her mother and brother in France.
If You Liked: Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour, Suzanne Colasanti(author), Jenny Han’s summer series, The Lying Game
