Title: Confessions of an Angry Girl (Confessions #1)
Author: Louise Rozett
Genre: Realistic Fiction, Contemporary, Romance
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Publication Date: August 2012
Pages: 384
Rating: 2.5 stars
Synopsis (from goodreads):
Rose Zarelli, self-proclaimed word geek and angry girl, has some confessions to make.
1. I’m livid all the time. Why? My dad died. My mom barely talks. My brother abandoned us. I think I’m allowed to be irate,don’t you?
2. I make people furious regularly. Want an example? I kissed Jamie Forta, a badass guy who might be dating a cheerleader. She is nowenraged and out for blood. Mine.
3. High school might as well be Mars. My best friend has been replaced by an alien, and I see red all the time. (Mars is red and “seeing red” means being angry—get it?)
Here are some other vocab words that describe my life: Inadequate. Insufferable. Intolerable.
(Don’t know what they mean? Look them up yourself.)
(Sorry. That was rude.)
My Review:
Soon to be fifteen-year-old Rose Zarelli feels like everyone she loves has abandoned her. Her father died recently in Iraq and as a result her mother is a shadow of her former self and doesn’t seem to notice that Rose still exists. Her older brother Peter has moved away to go to college and has a new life there and her best friend from the time they were in pre-school, Tracy, is more interested being a cheerleader than being there for Rose.
Understandably, Rose is feeling a little angry.
Now as September rolls around, Rose has to try to deal with the pressures of high school as well as trying to cope with losing her father.
There are a lot of issues dealt with in this book. Losing a loved one, first crush, drunken parties, teen sex. Rose is a character that whilst I didn’t always like her or how she dealt with certain situations, I did admire her overall for her actions and decisions. She didn’t always choose the easy way out. I really felt for her at times because I could see a lot of myself in her and I think that a lot of other people would be able relate to Rose in a similar way. I liked how the book addressed the topic of teen sex and sexual health. Not many books do that and I liked how uncertain about the whole topic Rose was. But I felt like some parts were a little unfinished – did the nurse ever call Rose with the results? – and could have done with some closure.
I think the part of the novel that touched me most was the dealings Rose had with her best friend Tracy – this is where I felt like this could have been my teenage diaries being narrated. And I loved how Rose dealt with the situation.
As far as her love interests go? I couldn’t really see many redeeming features for either Jamie or Robert. Jamie is the boy who is all kinds of bad for her and essentially only recognizes her existence because her brother called in a favour. He’s also sort of flat in terms of personality. This may be because Rose is sort of infatuated with him and the story is told in first person but I just couldn’t like him. He needed to do something more for me to really believe that he liked Rose – and not just because of Angelo’s recommendation that he does. Robert does show in the end that he’s not as bad a guy as one might think but it was too little, too late. I think I would have liked it if Angelo was the man of Rose’s affection.
This story isn’t action packed and drama filled – it’s rather a journey of an everyday girl dealing with life and I liked that about it. It’s full of heartbreak and learning to with life after a family has broken apart. I liked how this book focused on a teenage girl’s grief and feelings of abandonment.
I did feel like this book could have been left as a standalone novel and I was surprised to see that there is a sequel being released next year.
Thanks to Harlequin Teen and NetGalley for the review copy.
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