I read these two books last week in such a hurry that one would think my life depended on me finishing them. I absolutely adored them. They are earnest and confusing and angsty and everything else that is true and bizarre about the stage of life we call adolescence.
I’m won’t go too much into details here because I think everyone should find out for themselves about these marvelous stories. The books center around our heroine (anti-heroine? honestly, it’s hard to tell) Jessica Darling. Jessica is a wacky, smart and unbelievably confused 16 year old girl at the beginning of Sloppy Firsts. By the time we finish Second Helpings, she’s off to college, finished with high school and just as smart as she was with a very helpful dose of stupid. One of my favorite parts about these books is that they’re so much about the process of becoming aware of how much of a moron you are in high school.
It would be a joke if these books were anything other than painful and morose. They’re brilliantly funny at times. Jessica is a crack narrator whose forays in life are always done with the utmost timidness or the utmost energy. She has no halfway.
I found so much of my awkward, geeky self in these books. Though I’ve matured in the years since college I’m still a dorky human being. I may look and even sound like a normal human being if you were to meet me on the street one day but underneath I’m still the mass of confused neuroses that I was years ago. I’m wiser about things. I don’t go at them from an evasive and clueless way. But they’re still there.
Maybe that’s what makes the books so appealing. Everyone can find a piece of themselves in the book. The characters are honest and flawed. But most of all they are real people. They beautiful girls are vapid and shallow sometimes and unbelievably kind at other times. The boy next door turns out to be like the jock you’ve always tried to avoid. There’s that one guy who for some reason drives you up a wall with a combination of sheer annoyance and downright attraction. We’ve all been there in the messy, emotional puddle called life.
If you’re still not convinced, well, there’s probably nothing I can say to change your mind. But know that great knowledge often is best learned from the most unusual of teachers. Megan McCafferty is brilliant and wise. Just, take a chance. You might surprise yourself.
