Review: Faking 19 - Alyson Noël

Where I got it: Inter-library loan
Rating: 3.5 stars  

Cover Rating: 3.5 stars (The girl on the right has shorts which look a bit weird seeing the cover in real life. I like it though. Headless girls and all. That's a sweet ride.)
Genre: Young Adult

Publication Date: February 15, 2011

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Page Count: 210 p.

Buy it: Book Depository / Amazon
Add it: Goodreads

Alex and M are best friends. M is the most popular girl in the school, so Alex gets a pretty high ranking too. They decided that L.A. is the place to be, since there are nightclubs and older boys. Even though Alex should be studying to improve her grades, she follows M into the city. There they meet so guys and pretend to be nineteen, legal. Alex is struggling with a lot of things though, and faking nineteen just adds to the complications. She gets a much older boyfriend and spends almost all of her time in L.A. She dreams of a life different from the one she has, but if she can't graduate high school, she'll be stuck there for another year. Alex has little time to figure her life out and M doesn't seem to care about her friends despair. M just wants to have a good time, worry-free.

This book was a lot better than I was expecting. I was really expecting it to be a shallow read. Alex was a pretty complex person though, so that made the book way more interesting. There were a lot of issues in this book, some which weren't touched upon in full. There was a clueless mother, an absent father with a new life, a drug-using best friend, older boy relationships, virginity, failing school, college and probably a lot of other stuff too. This is Alyson Noël's first novel though, so I wonder if that has something to do with it. It screams "I HAVE ISSUES, I'M Y.A.!"

Besides the overabundance of drama in this novel, it was really interesting. Alex is having a tough year. Her father left and her mother is too busy to notice her daughter's decline. Alex just seemed depressed. Her life was falling apart at home and M wasn't really that great of a friend, so there wasn't anyone for her to turn to. Being depressed meant that Alex didn't feel compelled to do anything, like school. It sucks that she had to go through it alone. I know a lot of people probably do.

There was also the mysterious older boyfriend. That whole relationship was kind of weird. They never really talked about Alex, which I'm sure she was okay with. It just seems strange that he wouldn't notice that she was a lot younger. They didn't have anything to really talk about except for his life. It just doesn't seem like a good relationship. Apparently they were fond of it though. Alex just needed to get her head together I think. She wasn't sure what she wanted, so she just went with the flow.

I'm quite curious to check out Alyson's other realistic fiction YA. I've read some of the supernatural stuff, so it's interesting to see Alyson writing these novels with a different feel to them. If you like contemporary fiction try this one out.

First Lines:
"FIVE CELEBRITIES I'D SLEEP WITH IN A SECOND
1. Richard Branson
2. Tobey Maguire
3. Edward Norton
4. Jake Gyllenhaal (sp?)
5. That guy with the dark hair and sunglasses that I saw at Java Daze that time with M that I know is famous but I just don't know what I've seen him in.


Okay, so maybe my list isn't the same as yours."

Favorite Line:
"He reaches across the table and says, 'High School is almost over, and you're wasting your life if you stay here.'"