Adorkable - Sarra Manning

"Jeane Smith's a blogger, a dreamer, a dare-to-dreamer, a jumble sale queen, CEO of her own lifestyle brand and has half a million followers on twitter."

The Backstory - No Spoilers given!
Adorkable is a duel narrative. Despite this, I'd still say the main character is Jeane Smith, rather than Michael Lee, the counterpart to the book. Jeane is a rather stroppy, yet not unsympathetic character, who likes to be her own person. She's very unpopular in her narrow-minded school and area, but loved as an online personality, with a well known blog and large Twitter account.

The other narrator is Michael Lee. He is very much shown as the opposite of Jeane, being popular and with a lot of friends, athletic, and generally friendly. In the beginning of the book he is dating a rather dumb girl, just like Jeane is dating a rather unintelligent boy.

As indicated on the blurb by "the only thing they have in common is two cheating exes" the inevitable happens, and Michael's girlfriend starts a relationship with Jeane's boyfriend. This leads to both of them breaking up, and as the story progresses, they begin their own odd affair, hidden from the outside world to protect their individual reputations.

Like many main characters in this genre of writing, Jeane is actually quite lonely, despite her sarcastic, 'don't-need-anyone' attitude to life and people around her. The book does a great job of showing how online life can help people like her. I loved the line which stated something like: "So I turned on my computer, loaded up Twitter, and I wasn't alone anymore.' I thought it was really powerful, and very true! I could relate to her easily, and I think this is a similar thing with lots of people.

Bare in mind, I am not giving spoilers, so am not telling the full depth of the storyline. But don't go into it thinking it to be a classic piece of chick-lit, because it really is a lot deeper than that, and isn't just for a female audience.

How was it written?

Very well, I think. It was first person, and as I said before: a duel narrative. I say it was written particularly well, because each character was portrayed differently, from the others point of view. If you had just read Jeane's half, you would have thought Michael was showing off all the time, and that she was always right in what she did and said. And if you had just read Michael's parts, you'd have been made to think Jeane was complete b!tch!

In the early parts of the story, before they 'got to know each other' better, Jeane quite mean to him, as she wasn't prepared to let anyone be nice to her. She was almost a loner by nature, and uncertain around normal, real people. She was dramatic and a bit OTT. During the novel she does some talks abroad about fashion, blogging, etc.: advertising her Adorkable Brand.

Michael and Jeane were different, and each of them managed to have a good voice and character, despote them changing from chapter to chapter. It became quickly obvious who was who.

What also made it an attractive read was that it was also funny! To many books for teenagers and young people are miserable, depicting a bleak future, or talking about 'THE ONLY KEY, IS SURVIVAL etc.' P-lease, it's soo overrated. This one avoided this completely. It dealt with real, teenage life and feelings, and made it amusing and witty to read.

Was there anything you didn't like about it?

Although I loved this book to no end, there were several 'problems' my talons managed to seek out in this one. The main one was believability. Most of it was realistic, but some elements made me frown and wonder if this was possible.

For example, Jeane is a reasonably well known blogger and tweeter. As I said before, she does conventions and speeches in public about fashion, and her Adorkable Brand. So how can she be almost a minor celeb in the fashion and blogging world, yet be unpopular and disliked at school? This didn't hang together so well, for me.

Also, wouldn't some of her school friends follow her on Twitter as well as knowing her in school? Oddly, she never seems to meet anyone online she knows in real life, which for someone with an online social life of her extent seems odd.

Would you recommend it?

Certainly. Yes, yes, I know I managed to churn out a good couple of paragraph of faults, but these were really very minor in the book as a whole. It was a great read, a fun book, and a clever idea from the author. Even if some elements aren't realistic, this doesn't always matter so much if you want something light to read.

Thank you for reading my review of Adorkable, by Sarra Manning.

~Yellow Jane~ :)