Perfect You

Awwww....I'm a sucker for this kind of chick lit. Elizabeth Scott is a great author to recommend to those that can't get enough Sarah Dessen.

Kate's best friend has lost a lot of weight and suddenly become one of the popular girls. In addition to the friendship drama, Kate finds herself struggling with her family - her dad seems to be having a midlife crisis (he quit his job to sell vitamins at the mall), her mom is willfully blind to her dad's failures, and her impossible-to-please grandmother has moved in with them. While helping her dad out at his hopeless vitamin kiosk at the mall, Kate starts hooking up with a guy from school and fellow mall-worker, Will. He's sort of her friend, but not really; she kind of likes him, but maybe she show more doesn't; is he a player or isn't he? Etc. etc.

It's obvious where this is going to go from almost the first time she mentions Will, but I still loved the process of getting there. My only wish was that there had been a little comeuppance for the social-climbing former best friend. I mean, I guess her messed-up life is it's own reward, but still... I think E. Scott took great pains to show that the teen characters were all driven by complex feelings and emotions, all backed up by complex family relationships - very realistic, with no true villains.

Kate is mean, kind of self-pitying, sarcastic, and awesome. I liked her a bunch (perhaps I over-related? ha ha). show less

'Vitamins had ruined my life.'

So begins Kate Brown's story. Life isn't easy for anyone when you're a sophomore in high school, but Kate might have more than her fair share of angst. Her dad's quit his job to follow his dream of opening up a vitamin kiosk in the mall. Her best friend Anna lost a ton of weight over the summer and is now ignoring Kate and hanging out with the popular girls they used to make fun of. And Will, resident hottie, can't help but make jibes at her every day in biology class. Although sharp-tongued Kate holds her own, she harbors a secret crush on him which makes it heartbreaking to know that he thinks so little of her.

What's a girl to do? Kate's answer is to freeze everybody out and keep herself from caring about show more anyone. After all, people only let you down. Or do they?

What I love, love, loved about this book is what I've loved about all of Elizabeth Scott's books. Her characters are so real that sometimes I wanted to shake them. They don't have easy, uncomplicated problems. Even when things are going well, they're messy and sloppy, just like a real relationship or a real family dynamic.

Hand this one to fans of Sarah Dessen.

Read more on my blog:
http://abbylibrarian.blogspot.com/2008/11/book-review-perfect-you.html show less

Kate's life can't possibly get any worse. For starters, her dad quit his job to start selling vitamins in the mall, she's stuck helping him and, oh yeah, her former best friend acts like she doesn't exist anymore. Over the course of several months of the school year, Kate narrates what she's dealing with: school, friends, popularity, family, and just about everything life throws her way.

The characters and their struggles were very real, especially the main character's, but Kate gives away more than she realizes about others like her mother, her brother, and her crush. This was sometimes frustrating because I could usually figure out what was going on faster than Kate did. The other thing that frustrated me was how quickly Kate's show more problems are resolved. Up until then, a lot of her issues with friends and popularity had struck me as very real and problems I could relate to remembering my own teen years, so the sudden epiphany seemed a bit contrived. Other than that, I found this an enjoyable, realistic read about high school and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to teens. show less

Sophomore year is not going particularly well for sixteen year old Kate Brown. Her father quit his job to sell infomercial vitamins at the mall, and has turned it into a family business (and not a successful one). Her best friend Anna quit talking to her at the beginning of the school year after undergoing a transformation, and she now pretends that Kate doesn't exist- unless she is laughing at her. And she can't quite figure out why Will Miller, player and jackass, is so interested in talking to her... and why she can't seem to stop thinking about him. Over the course of the novel, Kate is forced to come to some realizations about herself and the people in her life, from her family, to Anna and Will.

There are many points throughout show more the novel where Kate comes across as being quite selfish, but she's sixteen, and it's easy to see where she gets it from, as her father and older brother are quite selfish as well. She's also a bit of a doormat; no matter how poorly Anna and her new friends treat her, she still wants nothing more than to be friends with Anna again. And sometimes, she is just plain mean, particularly in the way she treats Will. But all of her behavior points to one thing: she is a teenage girl whose life is rapidly changing, and she's struggling to deal with these changes. And there lies Scott's talent: she has accurately depicted the very real emotions teenagers experience, without trapping them in material objects and concerns. Overall, I thought this was a great read, and would recommend it to anyone interested in reading realistic young adult novels. show less

This was my first novel by Elizabeth Scott, and I can tell you I'm looking forward to reading more in the near future. This was a story that felt realistic. The descriptions and dialogue felt true to teenagers, not overly dramatic or far fetched. Kate is a character I think many teenage girls can easily relate to; with embarrassing parents, a friend she feels betrayed by, and that one boy who you can't help crushing on.

While reading this book I found that I could place myself in Kate's shoes without any difficulty, feeling what she felt when reacting to what was going on around her. I cringed at the bee costume and the carrot hat. I got butterflies when Will grinned at her. I felt a bitter knot in my stomach when Anna blew her show more off.

Elizabeth Scott has a real talent at creating characters that are rich and complex. I loved Will and Grandma, who both unfolded in a way throughout the story that allowed my appreciation for them to grow. Characters are the most important aspect of a novel to me, and in this instance they definitely built the story.

I loved this book, and wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who hasn't had the opportunity to read it yet. show less

Not one of the better Elizabeth Scott books that I have read. The main character Kate was whiny and annoying, her parents were just as annoying. I did enjoy the book, though I skipped the paragraph whenever Kate started with her "nobody cares about how HARD my life is" stuff.
Kate's world seems to center around the fact that her old best friend will no longer speak to her and seems to look right through her, and to top it all off, Kate has to work at the mall helping her father "try to" sell Perfect You vitamins. Things slowly go downhill for Kate, and her parents end up splitting up, and her mom, grandmother and she all move into an apartment after they have to sell the house. The only good thing that came out of it all was that Kate show more finally started standing up for herself and let people know what she was thinking instead of just keeping it all inside.
There of course was a love interest and that came in the form of Will, Kate's classmate, and crush. Will seems to annoy Kate a lot and while I saw it as him flirting, Kate didn't see it till the end of the book when he explained it to her. show less

This was a fairly good book, but I think it could have benefited from being a little shorter, for starters. The previous book by the author that I read, "Something Maybe," was nice because it didn't overextend its cute and original premise. This one sort of fell into a bit of a "plot loop" with the same worries, conflicts, and events being rehashed far too much.

Kate's life isn't going too well at the moment. She's had a falling out with her best friend, and doesn't really understand why. Her father has spontaneously quit his job to sell vitamins at the mall. Her overbearing grandmother is moving in with them. And Will, whom she simultaneously hates and is attracted to, won't leave her alone. Each of these problems walks its own slow show more path to resolution, some with decent development, others less so.

The changing family relationships were well done, I thought; fairly realistic and not too angsty. I also came to like the grandmother character after a while.

Unfortunately, the personal problems of Kate herself were not quite as well handled. Her problems with her friend Anna began in a promising manner, but dragged on in circles for too long. However, I could still understand her reasons for feeling the way she did about their collapsing friendship. Kate's problems with her father and his new job also started out amusing and original, but in the end she seemed to be repeating the same tired litany too often. After a while, the "I hate my life" tone started cropping up a bit too much for comfort, pushing the narration into the whiny even though Kate realizes her mistakes in the end.

The romance with Will was cute but with some bumps in development. I never really understood Kate's mindset about the whole thing; she seemed a bit dense and overreactive when it came to a lot of things, and I found myself feeling sorry for the guy a lot.

In the end, all was resolved well, but the journey to get there could probably have been shortened. It would have helped with the feeling of "Okay, I'm done" I started to get towards the end. show less