Review: Adorkable

Adorkable

Author: Sarra Manning
Pages: 387
Publisher: Atom
Source: Own Kindle copy

Description from Goodreads:
Welcome to the dorkside. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

Jeane Smith's a blogger, a dreamer, a jumble sale queen, CEO of her own lifestyle brand, and has half a million followers on Twitter. Michael Lee's a star of school, stage, and playing field. A golden boy in a Jack Wills hoodie. They have nothing in common but a pair of cheating exes. So why can't they stop making out? This novel is about an unlikely relationship, but it's also about roller derby, dogs on skateboards, dogs on surfboards, dogs doing any form of extreme sport, old skool hip hop, riding your bike downhill really fast, riot grrrl, those boys you want to kiss but punch in the face at the same time, dyeing your hair ridiculous colors just because you can, stitch 'n' bitch, the songs that make you dance, the songs that make you cry, being a bad ass, cake, love, death, and everything in between.

First Sentence: "'We need to talk,' Michael Lee told me firmly when I stepped out of the makeshift changing room at the St. Jude's jumble sale, which was actually four curtained rails arranged in a square, to have a good preen in front of a clouded mirror."

Review:

Here's a fact about me: if a title has the word dork in it, I'm going to read it. The same goes for nerd, geek, and librarian. I see these words and I just assume that the people within those pages will be my people, because, hello, I know what I am. Well, actually, it turns out I'm not so much a dork, according to this definition anyway, but, hey, the book was still totally fun, so I'm not really regretting my interest. Holla for all the dorks, geeks and nerds out there!

I think of myself as a fairly sarcastic, judgmental, bossy, intractable, and difficult to deal with person, but Jeane Smith is eight billion times more so. This girl does not ever go along with other people. She's making her own way all of the time, marching to the beat of her own crazily dressed drummer and convinced that there's no other drumbeat, so the rest of the people in the world look like assholes moving along out of tempo. Jeane is really hard to like, or she was for me. I empathized with her on some things: the difficulty of finding kindred spirits and the fact that many such spirits live on Twitter. On the whole, though, Jeane's biting personality proved a bit much even for me.

Thankfully, I got used to Jeane's way of being, so that, even if I don't like her especially, I am super entertained by her, which I think she would be totally okay with. I sort of think of Jeane as a combination of The Bloggess and Dorothy Parker. She blogs all the time, and has made herself into a lifestyle brand, tweeting pictures of things she enjoys and her daily crazy outfits. Being on her blog can make a brand or a band. Plus, she is totes brilliant at coming up with cutting comebacks, and she's rather snarly.

The overarching plot line deals with Jeane's romance, which conflicts with her values because she somehow finds herself kissing a *gasp* normal boy. In fact, the king of the normals, Michael Lee, sporty and wearing clothes from Hollister. Bleh, right? But he also happens to be a good kisser and fighting with him is really fun, and no one has to know, so why not? Honestly, I was super into this relationship, because you know how I love a good hate to love relationship and fangirl over good banter.

Michael and Jeane are also awesome because they don't act like teens in every other book ever. They actually agree to have no strings attached, or at least all of the strings are totally voluntary strings. Jeane encourages Michael to move their relationship to a sexual level, even though they're not in a relationship, because she's totally okay with herself and her sexuality. Even better, there's some awkwardness involved in their first couple of sexual encounters, and it's not all expert sex immediately, even though neither one was a virgin their first time. Their romantic arc is super cute and believable, and I rooted for those crazy kids, even if I'm not entirely convinced they could be a forever couple, but, honestly, who cares when they're so great right now.

For those who are like, ugh, romance, there are also some other plots involving Jeane's home situation. Her parents are the standard neglectful variety, both living in other countries, as is her older sister. Jeane has an apartment where she lives alone and eats nothing but Haribo, and lives in an utter mess that makes my house look perfectly pristine. To be entirely frank, though, I was super not in the book for these parts and I got a bit bored. Plus, I don't feel like her family life had any sort of plot resolution, other than that she sort of ended up adopting Michael's family, so I don't think this was what Manning super cared about in the long run.

Though Adorkable took a bit of time to grow on me, we totally ended up being friends, and I was really excited all week to read this in bits of free time, since I was reading this on my iPod touches Kindle app whenever I had downtime and no book. Adorkable is really funny and has some great romance. I've not really heard anything about Sarra Manning's other books, but I will definitely be looking into them. Peace out, dorkfaces!

Rating: 3.5/5

Favorite Quote: "He didn't say anything and I thought I'd shocked him, because I tend to do that. Not just with Michael but with pretty much anyone who can't deal with being honest and admitting that you have wants and needs and desires and all those other fun things."