Book Review: Girl

Girl by Blake Nelson

Official Website

Description: Meet Andrea Marr, straight-A high school student, thrift-store addict, and princess of the downtown music scene. Andrea is about to experience her first love, first time, and first step outside the comfort zone of high school, with the help of indie rock band The Color Green.

I don't have a cute introductory paragraph for Girl. I saw it mentioned on Rookie Mag's website and I got really curious about it and bought it. (And I never buy books) So here are the reasons why I love Girl. (There are no bad reasons, this is a review praising Girl and Blake Nelson.)

Girl tells the tale of Andrea Marr. We are the same person, and that's all there is to it. You see, Andrea's friend Cybil shaves her head and starts a punk band. And Andrea goes to see them, and becomes friends with the band members, and observes everything, and then people start noticing her. Andrea was like a sponge, but in a totally good way, because she absorbed everything around her and adjusted her life to those changes. She became good friends with all these band guys, ends up falling in love with one of them, and becomes a very important member of the Portland music scene, without even picking up an instrument.

If you read this book, you will catch a glimpse of the Staten Island music scene. There's those kids that are so serious about their bands, and those who just do it for fun. And the groupie girls who hang on to the popular band's every words. There's the girls that go and pretend it's a social outing and they're not even listening to the music. I'm definitely Andrea Marr in this book because I've been a wallflower in life and in the music scene for the past two years, and I'm finally starting to get the hang of everything. Like Andrea, yeah I go for the music because some bands have something good there, but just the atmosphere of shows is so much fun. You learn something new about your town by becoming a fan of the local music scene. Trust me.

Girl very accurately portrays the things a young adult deals with when they're coming of age. I actually think this is a better coming-of-age novel than Perks. The changes that Andrea goes through are happening to me right now, and that's why I loved this book so much. While I was reading it, my life was pretty pre-Todd Sparrow-Andrea, but a Big Bang occurred and now my life is playing out like a bad Emma Stone movie.

I loved the diary-like writing of Blake Nelson. It sounded so raw, so real, so much like what I would write. However, I could sense that it would become annoying because multiple paragraphs start with, 'And then I did this and that and went here and bought this dress.'

I'm so excited to read the sequel,Dream School, because I'm going away to college in two months and I'd like to see how Andrea deals.

(I would like to apologize, because I forgot how to write reviews. Just know that I loved this book, and if I ever got the chance to meet Blake Nelson, I'd kiss his feet and thank him for writing one of the most realistic books I've ever read.)

(I'd also like to include that I saw the straight-to-dvd adaption of the book and I started crying because it looked so terrible. Why did they have to touch my precious Girl?)

"But one glimpse of Todd and you immediately realized how limited you were and all the things you could do if you could just break out of your normal existence and stop worrying about what everyone thought."

-Girl/////Blake Nelson