Not My Daughter

Not My Daughter by Barbara Delinsky

Three bright, college bound teens make a pact to become pregnant and have babies.  News of the pact is quickly leaked by one of the friends.  The community's anger and disappointment is soon turned on one of the mothers......also the principal of the highschool.  The mother having been pregnant herself at seventeen but still making a successful life.

The story drew me in when I wondered, 'What the heck were they thinking?"  And then......pft, what they were thinking was never really explained.  The girls decided after a summer of babysitting that they, as mature 17 year old girls, could be better mothers than the ones they worked for.  Also it seemed so fun to have something of your own.  I would like to offer up that a kitten would have been a better choice.

The book had its points.  The mothers did question their culpability in the situation, wondering if they had parented wrong.  And as far as the book describes, they probably didn't, but it is a question asked by most parents.  It was just a foolish pact between the girls.  Once the gossip mill started there were some hard times.  It described fairly well what it can be like in a small town where your business is everyone elses.  The maturity of the girls seemed to be on target.  They were ridiculous fools.  And even though Delinsky showed this........I was still more than irked.  The girls were idiots.  They never had a good reason for doing something SO life changing.  Beyond the passing mention of adoption or abortion, the options were never really given any creedence.  The main teen Lily said more than once that she didn't want the father in the picture because she wanted the baby to be 'hers'.  It made me so violently angry that I wanted to poke her in the eye.  So self centered and immature I wanted the community to rip her to shreds.  By the end.....probably the worst part........the whole package is tied up in a snappy little bow.  The babies are all born healthy.  All of the parents accept the babies and their daughters.  The girls live at home and get taken care of by their parents.  I'm not saying that that situation isn't probably true to life at times......I just didn't like it.

Rating 2  Okay, I wanted somewhere in the book to have better options or to show the struggle.....or to at least show someone with enough maturity to say 'hey what's best for the poor baby?'. 
Rating PG 13 Teen pregnancy, subject of abortion, sex between an unmarried adult couple, teen sex

Impossible

Impossible by Nancy Werlin

The song 'Scarborough Fair' takes the starring role as a curse.  Lucy is a regular girl living with her foster parents.  Her life takes a dramatic change;  her crazy birthmother shows up just as Lucy is heading off to her first prom, a strange and enchanting man shows up for dinner at her parent's house, her long time neighbor/best friend Zach, moves into her house, and her prom date becomes posessed and rapes her.
Lucy realizes that the song 'Scarborough Fair' isn't just a song her looney mother sang because she was nuts.  It is a curse, a riddle, and a warning.  Lucy has to find a way to accomplish all of the tasks in the riddle, in order to break the curse put on all of the women in her family by an Elfin Knight.  She only has a short amount of time to break the curse before she becomes crazy......as all of the women before her have.

Lucy was easily likeable.  She is quiet and determined and makes the strange plot easy to believe.  Lucy and Zach quickly fall in love despite their ages.  Zach, along with Lucy's very supportive parents, help her unwind the riddle that will soon take her mind.  I didn't really end up liking Soledad (Lucy's foster mother) very much.  I think somehow I took her to be a liberal, granola......and she never sat well with me most of the time.

Rating 4  Loved Lucy and Zach together.  I loved the magical quality and unique way that the song was turned into a curse.  The characters where a great group that I became attached to.

Rating PG 13   Rape, teen pregnancy, information about abortion, evil magic used to cause a mental disorder and to coerce someone into being a sex slave.

Crank

Crank by Ellen Hopkins

Hopkins writes the whole book in forms of poetry.  I had only heard that the book was a best seller, but nothing else.  When I first began to read I thought the poetry was only part of the opener.  It looked genius!  Then I turned the pages and found that every single one of them had more poetry...........I became skeptical and somewhat put out.  I thought the prose would impede my reading.  It took until about page 20 (which I made it to very quickly) to really get into the rythm.  Thereafter I was hooked.

Kristina goes to meet her estranged father over summer break from high school.  Up to this point she has been an A student.  Kristina has had no boyfriends or even been kissed.  By the time she returns to her mother and siblings three weeks later, Kristina is calling herself Bree, is hooked on meth, and well on her way to lots of sex on speed.

The intensity of the writing made me feel like I was an addict.  It was very powerful.  Kristina's spiral happened so fast that it was unbelievable.......well believable........but crazy.

Rating 4.5  Did I love it??? NO!!!! Was it an eye opener?? YES!!  I hope the Monster never touches my life.
Rating R Rape, sex, drug abuse, addiction, alcohol, teen pregnancy, abortion.