Moon's Reviews > Ten Things I Hate About Me

I read this one a few years ago - I think I got it from a charity shop when I went to Northampton - and I enjoyed it enough to keep it for future reference. It went onto my keep-shelf. I would like to say that donating my books to charity or to a book exchange is some grand act of benevolence, but it's also for economy of space. As a practitioner of tsundoku, I have about 300 unread books littering my house and if I kept all of them after I very slowly read them, my tsundoku would get me into even more trouble with my mother than it already does. But if I love a book, it stays. Apparently I liked this one enough to keep it, though through the fog of time I can't remember quite why. I know that this time I won't keep it. That's not an indictment of the quality, because I still found this book funny and realistic when it comes to the general pressures of teenage-girldom. Shout out also to the extremely accurate portrayal of dad texts: one singular Y as a third message is exquisite in its evocation of what it's like getting texts from my dad.

It's really emotionally mature, too. It may not seem so at first with Jamie's choices, but any time I find myself going "Nooooo, what are you doing?!" to a character, it's kind of a good thing. It means I care. Character development, innit. But while emotionally mature it is also simplistically summerised: it's all spelled out to you, just in case you missed it.

I hope someone else will find this book in the charity shop I donate it to, as I did when I was 16-odd, (and 16 and odd) and have it speak to them as much as it seemingly did to me a few years ago. May it rest for a long time on their own keep-shelf.