Book review: Not Pretty Enough by Jaimie Admans

“New Year’s Resolutions:

1. Lloyd Layton will know I exist. He once said three whole words to me, so this is obviously progress. If I don’t get a proper conversation out of him soon, then I’ll take my top off and streak through the cafeteria, because nobody could fail to notice these boobs.

2. I will not get expelled for streaking through the cafeteria.”

Those are the words that begin her mission.

Chessie is fourteen, not pretty enough, and very much in love. Lloyd Layton is hot, popular, and unaware of Chessie’s existence.

Her goal is clear: to get Lloyd to love her as much as she loves him, and she has exactly one year to do it.

As Chessie’s obsession with Lloyd reaches boiling point and she starts to spin a web of lies that spiral out of control, Lloyd turns out to be not quite the prince she thought he was. Can Chessie avoid the gathering storm before things go too far?

Not Pretty Enough just wasn’t worth it in my eyes.  On the surface it’s rather rife with formatting problems (mostly dialog tag stuff, which is one of my biggest pet peeves).  Once you actually read it, you realize that there really is no plot to this book other than Chessie liking a boy and doing really, REALLY stupid things in her attempts to get him to notice her.

And when I say really, REALLY stupid, I do mean it.  This entire book reads like the script for some kind of slapstick comedy, with Chessie constantly hurting herself and smashing into busses, doors and light poles.  It isn’t just physical (non)comedy, though; Chessie is a rather terrible and thoughtless person, getting herself into stupid situations just because she doesn’t think how they might pan out or why it might be a bad idea.  She actually lets Lloyd believe that she’s being abused by her parents because he sees a bruise from a girl hitting her with her bag in gym, and Chessie refuses to tell him what really happened for whatever reason.  It actually gets to the point where her mother is arrested and brought in for questioning about it.

And then she spends several days moping about it and saying how unfair the whole situation is because, you know, it’s totally okay to lie about your parents beating on you if you tell the people involved that you’re sorry.

Not to mention Lloyd is probably the most cardboard cutout character I’ve ever seen.  We literally know that he’s tall, likes sports, and that Chessie likes him.  When he turns out to be a jerk, I was as shocked as she was, because there sure wasn’t any reason for us to think he was.  I realize it might be intended to show that Chessie didn’t actually know him and shouldn’t have been going after him like she was, but it just made it rather boring in my eyes.

Overall, not a great book.  Nothing stood out about it in a positive way, so it isn’t really one I’d recommend.