Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty

Originality- 15/20
Characters- 19/20
Remembrance- 8/10
Quote-ability- 8/10
Entertainment- 18/20
Ending- 8/10
Recommend to read- 8/10
TOTAL- 84/100
Grade- B

When her best friend, Hope, moves away after her brother dies of a drug overdose, sixteen-year-old Jess copes with loss of the only friend who understands her. Diary entries and monthly letters to Hope reflect Jess's longing for love but refusal to settle for just anyone, and reveal her rivalry with her perfect, engaged sister. Frustrated because she excels in school with ease, Jess feels that she is participating in class only for her college applications. When she conveniently hurts her ankle and replaces track with journalism, her acerbic editorials make her a spokesperson for the non-Upper Crusts at her high school.

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This book was absolutely hilarious. I've seen it so many times at the library a couple of years ago and I saw it more online when other reviewers talked about it. I couldn't understand what was so compelling about it. Until I read it that is.

The book was only a little hard to get into but once I was a chapter or so in I couldn't stop. I really liked Jess. Usually the main character finds some way to annoy me but Jess didn't. In a lot of ways she seemed like me. She overthinks everything and stresses out. It's interesting to see how Jess deals with being friends with people she can't really identify with. It gets pretty old reading about friendship fights and drama of the same genre, but not here. You usually see the girls who are on the receiving end or the giving end. Jess was on neither. She was caught right in the middle. I know exactly how that feels.

Even though the book wasn't incredibly original, the characters were. They had a way of drawing me in. And since I love the bad boys I was completely infatuated with Marcus. How come we don't have any guys like that here in the real world? I want a unique thinking guy! It's a little cliched that the good girl with fantastic grades falls in love with the prior bad boy. What can I say about that though? This is exactly what I want to read!

Overall I think that Sloppy Firsts is a great beginning to the series. I am definitely going to buy the next book very soon. I would reccomend this books to teen girls who want to read about someone that seems to have it all but doesn't have what she really wants.

-Amanda