Part Hawaiian Lea Lane is the new junior at private, privileged Punahou School on Oahu, Hawaii. After her actress mother accepts a role on a TV show shooting on the island, they return to the island Lea only knew as a kid. This time she's the new girl, struggling to fit in among these beautiful, wealthy teens with her best friend from childhood, Danny, her only true friend. But when her mother accepts an offer from an old friend to move into the guest house on their estate, Lea gravitates to her mother's friend's kids, brother and sister Will and Whitney, and finds herself wanting to be accepted into their world, unaware of the consequences.
The Long Version:
Let me preface my review by saying I loved Hemming's debut novel, "The Descendants" and also the movie it was based on. Her acerbic wit (I'm a big fan of acerbic) and great dramatic flow made her first adult novel engrossing and endearing. She had a flare for great younger characters, their behavior and mannerisms and way of speaking, and wrote one of my favorite literary young adults, the secondary character of Sid.
This is Hemming's first young adult novel, and another, equally endearing version of Sid exists here in the form of secondary character Danny. Hemming's characters are what drive her story here too, when the plotting feels otherwise predictable and familiar, you hook your wagon to main character Lea, identifying with her adolescent insecurities and verbal stumbling.
Juniors is at it's heart a teenage melodrama about trying to fit in and be accepted. It's about that particular year in high school when you've been around belong enough to not be new and unaware of the social petrie dish but haven't yet experimented with the confidence of being on the cusp of graduation and leaving for parts unknown. The strength of her writing is in depicting many of the insecurities and traits of teenage girls: the competitiveness, the self-doubt and self-deprecation, cutting one another up behind their backs, jealousy. In Lea she's done a great job in personifying those qualities, even when you wish she'd wake up even a little before the last thirty pages.
The book succeeds in being a pretty textbook melodrama, it moves you, you know you're being emotionally manipulated but don't mind because the author is pretty confident in moving you along (even when you know exactly where you're going). That's not necessarily a bad thing. The result is an enjoyable, quick read that slightly elevates the teen melodrama with wit, some decent character development and, by the end, an endearing ending that speaks to how teens grow a little more and understand a little more a little at a time.
No comments:
Post a Comment