Undiscovered Gyrl was sent to me as a review book. Katie has just finished High School and has decided she is not ready to begin college. With some advice she decides that she need to document her time with a journey, but instead of keeping a record of her journey through writing she decides to keep a blog that details the highlights of her life. At this point I still felt this story had awesome potential, but once I began delving into this story I was quickly let down. The story is a long drawn out process of a young girl gone wild. Many teens have a point in their lives where they go a little crazy with immaturity, and show some true colors for a little bit of time. Most of the book was a steady stream of what I considered boring dialog, and it felt as though the story was lacking a direction. The portion of this story that I found exceptionally interesting was the last few page of Katie's Mothers blog entries. All in all this story was very unsetlling which could enormously have to do with that I have pressed past this point in my life, and now as a Mother it is a nightmare to think that sooner rather than later may children could be going through a life patch such as this. ( )

Publisher: Only on the internet can you have so many friends and be so lonely.
Beautiful, wild, funny, and lost, Katie Kampenfelt is taking a year off before college to find her passion. Ambitious in her own way, Katie intends to do more than just smoke weed with her boyfriend, Rory, and work at the bookstore. She plans to seduce Dan, a thirty-two-year-old film professor.

Katie chronicles her adventures in an anonymous blog, telling strangers her innermost desires, shames, and thrills. But when Dan stops taking her calls, when her alcoholic father suffers a terrible fall, and when she finds herself drawn into a dangerous new relationship, Katie's fearless narrative begins to crack, and dark pieces of her past emerge.

Sexually frank, often heartbreaking, and bursting with devilish humor, Undiscovered Gyrl is an extraordinarily accomplished novel of identity, voyeurism, and deceit.

My Thoughts: I started reading undiscovered gyrl thinking it would be a simple, quick read entertaining but somewhat immature for an adult. I expected to read a story that taught a lesson or attempted to instill values and morals, with some of the hokiness of an after school special, in young adults. Well, you know what they say about assuming something.. .ahem! ...well, jus don't! I never read YA Fiction before now but I certainly will after reading this book.

An undiscovered gyrl is a young girl who doesn’t feel valued, who feels she isn't noticed or is ignored by the world around her. She thinks if she vanished tomorrow nobody would notice. She’ll say that she doesn't want to be noticed but she craves attention for the person she is not the person she appears to be. She fears being forgotten. An undiscovered girl has a family but her family members are wrapped up in their own lives. She is selfish partly because she feels like nobody really wants to know her true self.. She likes to dramatize her life and often over-reacts to even the smallest issues to get attention. An undiscovered girl is insecure and self-conscious because she feels unloved. It's common for her to do whatever it takes to get attention, even if the attention makes her feel badly about herself afterwards. An undiscovered girl is a lost, lonely young girl aching for someone to love her unconditionally and tell her it's okay to be herself. Katie is all of these things and so much more. Katie Kampenfelt is an undiscovered girl like so many female teenagers.

I didn't like or dislike this book. "Like" is too simple a concept for how this book made me feel. Few books have cause me to experience the range of emotions I felt while reading undiscovered gyrl. At different times anger, disgust, sadness, pride, compassion, pity, laughter, aggravation, revulsion and fear coursed through me. Katie made me laugh, scream, grit my teeth, groan and smile intermittently. While reading the bits and pieces of her life she shared, Katie, the main character, appeared insecure and self-conscious like so many young girls today. But she's also arrogant, very intelligent and scared. She makes many poor decisions out of a desire to be loved and doesn't completely grasp the difference between unconditional love and being loved for what you can provide another person such as sex.. Katie's insecurity is partly the result of poor, selfish parenting and lack of attention. Glimpses of the sad little girl who just wants her daddy's love tugged at my heart strings but the drinking, drugging obnoxious Katie annoyed me.

The blog entries that comprise undiscovered gyrl seduce the readers into believing they have an intimate, personal relationship with Katie. Reading her most personal thoughts and being privy to the details of her life feeds the voyeuristic tendencies most of us possess and that have made reality shows so popular. But in actuality we only know what Katie decides to tells us and what she wants us to think or know about her. Katie's flair for the dramatic, common to many teenage girls, enables her to shock people from which she gets significant enjoyment. The jarring, sometimes unbelievable entries that attract numerous and critical readers to Katie's blog, undermines the verity of what she says. Many of the numerous themes that are introduced don't come to fruition because Katie is directing the storyline. The reader is left with a sense of loss which also begs the question of whether we can believe Katie.

Once I started reading this book, it was difficult to put down. As much as several of Katie's blog entries made me cringe while others disgusted me, Katie definitely got under my skin. I was rooting for her halfway though the book. I was extremely disappointed by the end of this book for many different reasons. But that's all I'm going to say about that!.

I think this is an especially good book for the parents of a young girl or anyone who is caring for a young girl because it touches on so many of the issues young girls confront growing up in the world today. It's also a good book for older teenagers, for some it may even serve as a wake-up call. Katie is smart, beautiful and wants to be loved. She has so much potential. But she seems to be teetering on the edge, about to plunge into the dark side. She needs someone to grab her up, hug her, ease her insecurities and tell her it's going to be okay before it's too late. The same goes for so many young girls today. ( )

Honestly, I was surprised by the book. It’s set up as a blog-to-book, and in it you watch as the narrator (the definition of the “unreliable narrator” to be sure) grows as a blogger, and disintegrates in some ways as a person. The idea of being able to be completely open in the anonymity is, at first, a relief and exciting thing for her, later it seems to be something that pushes her to more extreme and outrageous behavior… if for no other reason than to get a reaction from her readers.

Personally, there are parts of this that scare the hell out of me. I have a 16 and 15-year-old, neither of which are really that into blogging and stuff… now. Maggie, on the other hand, is 10 and a bit extroverted. ”Katie” tells about her mother and her boyfriend’s fighting, her dad and his girlfriend’s abusive relationship, and how she pits everyone against each other to get what she wants. She continually tells her readers that there is NOTHING sexual behind her boss’s generosity, but relays stories about him in such a way as to leave it almost obvious. She degrades herself over “Dan,” her college instructor on-the-side, and you can’t help but feel pity for her… she so wants to be loved, she’s willing to turn herself into that girl who waits desperately for his girlfriend to go away so she can devour the scraps.

With Undiscovered Gyrl, Allison Burnett reveals a very real picture of the modern teenage life. Unable to read and comprehend a book a year unless assigned by a teacher, but reads and responds to 20 emails, IMs and text messages a second. She couldn’t fathom doing homework without the TV on, CD blaring and the Google open on the computer. It makes me glad I’ve not given any of my kids a cell phone. They don’t have TVs in their bedrooms, even. We just got a second computer last June, so maybe mine will be safe…

Here’s the thing: Undiscovered Gyrl is very graphic and I even learned a few sex-things from reading it. I never knew what a “box job” was before this book. But it’s not porn, per se, and it all goes into the story for a purpose. It is shocking… at least for me, an over-30-parent. “Katie” isn’t totally unsympathetic, yet says things at times that make me want to slap the snot out of her. She’s so stupid and I just want to grab her up and say, “Wake up! You’re throwing your life away!” But, if there’s one thing I got out of this book it’s this: The fact it came from an adult would render it meaningless all together.

Click for full review: http://thekoolaidmom.wordpress.com/20... ( )

Katie Kampenfelt is 17 years-old who has just graduated from high school. She is taking time off before she starts college and to help sort out her intense conflicts she decides to start a blog. The book is a series of posts written by her about her life, and what a life it is! She doesn't hold back and shares intimate details about everything - her relationship with her divorced parents, her friendships, her sex life. While it appears at first to be a story of a typical teen it quickly spins into a tale of her destructive behavior.

Katie's actions become more and more disturbing as she spins out of control. When her attempts to get attention from her absentee father are rebuffed she eventually seeks out comfort from older, unattainable men. Her emotions are out of control and she goes from seemingly random sex acts to outbursts of uncontrollable crying. Her friendships are dwindling and she turns to drug and alcohol to dull her pain. She reveals it all in her blog posts with crude language that is very disturbing but also appropriate for her situation.

My feelings about this book were very confusing. I found it to be shocking and raw but also compelling. I wanted to know what was going to happen to this teenage girl who was spiraling down into a pit of despair. It was like a car crash that I couldn't turn away from. I felt so bad for the child but I wanted to grab the teenager and tell her to wake up! But I did feel sympathetic for this character and understood how her poor choices snowballed out of control. The ending was quite a shocker that I never saw coming. I won't give anything away here but it did leave me wanting more. It was appropriate for the story but it was very frustrating. I was also surprised to find out that the author was a man. His writing was very believable as that of a broken young girl. This would be a very interesting title for group discussions.

Thank you to Vintage Books for an ARC of this book. ( )

Katie is 17 and (as the book jacket says) a modern-day Lolita. One minute she’s a young woman on the cusp of adulthood, struggling with growing up, boyfriends, sex and normal teen worries. The next minute she’s a seductress, cold and unapologetic in the recounting of her quests. Through her blog, we watch. We sign on each day to read her next post. We watch her unravel, sense a terrible climax coming. A train wreck. A car crash. Then, one day, she’s gone. For the complete review and teaching resources visit Reading Rumpus. Review © 2009 Tasses ( )