Fetching

Originally posted on Read Handed.

Fetching is about thirteen year old Olivia, who is not one of the popular girls at her middle school. She and her friends are the ones who are laughed at, teased, and often ignored. Olivia lives with her grandmother, and often helps with her dog training business. Then, Olivia gets the idea of training her classmates using the techniques she learns from her grandmother. She figures that the popular kids are the alphas, but could easily be retrained to believe Olivia and her friends are in charge. The plan works perfectly until everything goes wrong!

This book addresses a popular YA topic, cliques and friendships between teenage girls, in a fun and original way. It reminded me a little of the movie Mean show more Girls except way toned down. Fetching has a good message about being confident in yourself and learning to love your own skin. Stewart emphasizes the little changes that girls go through as they learn how to transition into womanhood and become confident about their appearances: wearing makeup correctly, finding clothes that work with your body type, and discovering that perfect "product" that tames your frizzy hair and makes it "glossy" (too bad they didn't mention this miracle product by name...).

While I do think that teenage girl clique books/TV shows/movies are a bit overdone, it is a big issue that they deal with every day. And when you're a teenage girl, how your classmates see you is one of the most important things in the world. Thank goodness we grow out of that! show less

This book may be very far-"fetched", but it is still good. A middle schooler named Olivia is tired of being the subject of the pushes and jabs of the popular people, including Miss Perfect, Brynne Shawnson. Throughout the story, Olivia compares herself and others to breeds of dogs, making it interesting and new even though the story wasn't that great and the book wasn't so well written. The book is about something that might not wok in all cases depending on what school you go to, but overall, the book was okay. In my opinion, the dog breed comparisons were the only thing the book really had that kept me reading, but I do think it was worth my time.