Review: Very LeFreak - Rachel Cohn

Where I got it: Library
Rating: 3.5 stars
Cover Rating: 5 stars (I love it, she is so perfect, she is definitely Very.)
Genre: Young Adult
Publication Date: January 12, 2010
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Page Count: 303 p.

Very LeFreak loves her gadgets. She loves a good party and she loves her mysterious online boyfriend El Virus. She loves all this until El Virus disappears from cyberspace. When Very takes this opportunity to get too close to a friend she ruins everything between them. With everything going on and her lack of virtual boyfriend, Very starts to come unhinged and the only thing to be done with something that's broken is to fix it. So after a swift electronics intervention, Very is shipped of to ESCAPE (Emergency Services for Computer-Addicted Persons Everywhere) for twenty-eight days. Very doesn't know whether this time will fix her or make her pull her hair out. What is a girl to do if she can't plug in? Twenty-eight days should give Very just enough time to discover who she is without the screen.

So yeah, 3.5 stars. This book was tricky, because while I enjoyed it a lot, there was something off about it. It was a pretty slow read and I'm just not sure why. Very was an interesting character, I have never read a book where the main character is so addicted to electronics. This book made me feel like unplugging for awhile, because I could relate to how addicting technology is. Sometimes I go to update my blog and hours have passed while I've looked at other profiles and so on and so forth. I am still not sure how I feel about authors putting current cultural fads into their stories, like iPod and Red Bull etc. it seems like the stories won't hold up over time as those trends start to fade away or become obsolete. I did however love the music selections in this novel. Very and I would get along well based on music alone. Very seemed like a real person. She ran quite the gamut of emotions, including a complete mental breakdown. Her relationships with people seemed genuine enough even when they were strained. I did not like the ending at all, to me it just seemed so unfinished. I feel like there definitely needed to be much more to tidy up the end. I guess all things don't end tidily, but I've come to want that from some of my books. Also the last line was a killer "She was halfway there, wherever there was." ick. I have read and loved Rachel Cohn's other books so I'm still not sure why the pacing of this book seemed so weird. Maybe it was just the topic? It was still an excellent read and if you had wanted to read it I would suggest you pick it up. It was very unique in subject matter, though filled with your typical teen angst. Enjoy!

First Line:
"It wasn't the fact that Starbucks did not--would not-- serve Guinness with a raw egg followed by an espresso chaser that was ruining Very's hangover."

Favorite Line:
"She decided she'd make J.-W. a list of the places where the Dreams dropouts had left stashes of green eyeliner."