Normalish Blog Tour: Review

Info:

Title: Normalish
Author: Margaret Lesh
Publisher: Musa Publishing
Publication Date: October 5, 2012

Blurb:

Fifteen-year-old Stacy questions the strange world of high school, love, her role in a harsh universe, and life, in Normalish.

People tell you high school's so great and wonderful, but they're lying. It's mostly horrible and full of disappointment. It sucks. Your best friend abandons you. The jerk you're in love with pretends to be  into you, and then the big dump. The boy you've really clicked with as a friend decides to go all crushy over you, so you break his heart just like yours was -- smashed into little pieces. Your sister goes mental, and you get involved with a guy who’s even crazier than she is (who you know is a very bad idea, but you do it anyway). Math only adds another stink of failure to the whole thing.

High school blows. Just ask freshman Stacy. She’d want you to know.

My Thoughts:

I found Normalish to be an enjoyable YA contemporary read. Stacy is generally pretty likeable, considering the crappy crap she has to go through. She states the facts of her life and of course complains, but most of the time it's not the whiney, makes-me-want-to-claw-my-eyes-out, complaining. It's the legit, yeah-that-is-pretty-shitty kind of complaining that it would be weird for a character not to do.

My favourite part of Normalish is the changes that Stacy goes through over the year in which the book is set. I love watching characters grow and the change is Stacy is very marked indeed.

I also enjoyed the supporting characters in Normalish, since they were realistic and could have gone to my high school (even stupid Anthony). My favourite character is Roman. He was basically the perfect boyfriend for Stacy's sister Becca and I loved how supportive he was of Becca when she had some serious stuff going on. Plus, he was really cool to Stacy, when he didn't have to be. I actually liked Becca a lot as well. She seemed like an awesome sister to have, despite the issues that arise for her (trying hard to be spoiler free here). We don't see much of Stacy's other sister Jill and that's something I wish had been added to the story more.

For the most part I liked Stacy, but there were a couple times she drove me nuts. The main one was how over the top crazy she got about having a monster pimple. For the record (to show I know what I'm talking about), I had a major pimple over the weekend, which resulted in my mom asking (in public) "What's on your face?" I'm 24 for goodness sake. Anyway, my point is that pimple suck, but there's not the end of the world and I got sick of reading about Stacy's pimple for 5 pages. Although I guess that's one of the ways that a reader can see how much Stacy grew over the book.

I'll admit it, this one made me cry a bit (mostly in the scene with Jimi). No spoilers, but I was pretty misty-eyed.

Overall, I enjoyed Normalish a lot. If you're a fan of YA contemporaries, you should enjoy this one.

On the Cover:

I'm not sure about this cover. I think it could be improved somehow.

Rating: 4 Hearts

Source: I received an ecopy as part of the blog tour.

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