Rating: 
Summary: Oh, Just Kill the Freshman already...
Review: ...and spare us from reading her diary. I guess I can agree with the reviews that say this is just how high school is, because on some level that is true. We all know someone exactly like this person.
WAHHHH - no one understands me. I am so different/unique/special/fillinadjectivehere that I just don't belong here. This school and everyone in it are SO beneath my super unique intelligence and sensibility that they couldn't possibly understand or appreciate my super special qualities. They all suck, even the teachers - especially the ones who don't understand that my inability to communicate a story using some semblance of conventional English is just another example of my special-ness. My VOICE cannot be contained by silly conventions like plot and structure and if you can't follow what I am saying it isn't MY fault, it is just another example of your own lame-ness.
Yeah, we all knew those kids in high school. They generally went on to college and studied something in the "liberal arts" and took jobs that, oddly enough, were as beneath them as high school was. "I'm only doing this until I get married/until I get my REAL job/until my book deal comes through/until I figure out what I really want to do with my life (that is both meaningful and lucrative)/until my parents kick me out and cut me off/insertcleverexcuse,Imeanexplanationhere"
WAHHHHHH - this world just doesn't appreciate genius like mine.
But hey, she is young. Thank goodness none of us is a teenager forever. Let's wait and see if she has a follow-up and if she matures at all. One can hope.
But of course, chances are I still just won't get it.
Rating:
Summary: A bit disgusted...
Review: Honestly, I think Zoe is an okay writer. She uses some good imagery. But I don't know why I would ever want to waste my time reading about the 'horrible' life of a suburban middle-class high schooler. I am also suburban middle-class, but I don't publish books about it.
The homosexual and bisexual parts truly disturbed me. I hear about that enough at the U, on the news, and everywhere else, I don't need to read a book about it.
And I have to say, her hypocrisy overwhelmed me. People call her writing 'mature', but I say it's the farthest from. Her hate of everything and irrational liberal opinions only prove what happens to children's minds when they grow up in the 'burbs. She was wildly judgemental, which some people consider 'expressing opinions', but I got very annoyed with it after only a few pages.
Through the whole book I just wanted to shout 'Get Over It Already!' at the top of my lungs.
Rating:
Summary: Not worth it.
Review: I read the chapbook before she got way too popular and I was insanely not impressed. She really isn't all that special. Her writing really isn't all that good. And since I'm a girl who recently graduated from high school in Portland I can definitely say that she is acting like so many other Portland girls. She isn't controversal at all. It really comes down to her getting lucky, she shouldn't have been published.Read Catcher in the Rye instead.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing...
Review: I'm a year away from a freshman, a mere thirteen, but Please Don't Kill the Freshman caught me telling the pages, "Exactly. That's it!" There are a lot of books out there in that kind of teen-diary/letter format, but Zoe Trope does it in a way that is just... good.
I aspire to be a writer, and her opinions and metaphors were a huge inspiration to me. I would find myself saying one more page, one more page, until I had finished the book, and was left disappointed - only because it ended far too quickly.
The author's views on love, hate, superiority, distance, and just high school in general were refreshing. I felt like finally, after all these Princess Diaries and the like, someone had published a book from my end of the spectrum.
PDKTF is worth however much it costs, whatever age you are, because it's true - and you can't deny the truth.
Rating:
Summary: It's real
Review: I'm in high school, and I felt like the claim made on the back of the book ("I wrote a book about you...") was completely true.
Does this intend to be the next great classic? No. Zoe Trope wrote what she felt and what she experienced. I, for one, loved it.
Rating:
Summary: please dont ignore the freshman
Review: if you feel like reading something a little different...
this book is not catcher in the rye, so you could read both, but don't take peoples advice and read one instead. yes, this book sounds terribly like a high school student blurting out mature phrases and emotional rampages because... it is! and thats whats so great about it. zoe captures that feeling of freedom that you get when you are 15 and love everyone and hate them at the same time, when you are fascinated by the world and also frightened of it. her style of writing and passion for words is amazing for her age. she deserves all the attention and compliments she's recieved. the only thing i dislike about this book is that the pages turn too fast and the end comes too soon, just like the bittersweet, dream-filled years of life.
Rating:
Summary: Self-Indulgent Garbage
Review: It is remarkable what people will publish. Zoe Trope's "memoir" is a painful display of experimental prose on a tired subject. Having once been a 14 year old girl in a suburban high school myself, I expected to see some revelations in this book, a new take on an experience I myself have had. But instead, I read page after page of the kind of self indulgent egomanical attitude that comes with deep insecurity. There is a reason 14 year olds shouldn't force their diaries on anyone: they are BORING.
Not only is the writing plain bad, the actual topics discussed have absolutely no depth. If there is ANYTHING to be gleaned from this book, it is how sad it is that our culture is obsessed with the lives of white middle class youths. This book was like MTV on paper. Possibly more annoying. What makes it all the more worse is that Zoe Trope views herself to be some kind of a genius, and lets us know how special she is every other sentence. Well, Zoe, you're special alright. I truly feel pity for the people that have to endure being around you. Congratulations on being another way I can consume my daily dose of youth sensationalism.
Anyone looking to read this book: the back cover alone is vomit-worthy. The overrated Dave Eggers recommends it; that should be reason enough to avoid it. Save yourself the time and headache and re-read your own diary from high school. It is bound to have more insight.
Rating: 
Summary: oh, get over YOURselves, thirtysomething reviewers.
Review: It's not perfect, because she was fourteen.
It's not Dostoevsky-deep, because it's a young adult novel.
It's self indulgent because fourteen year olds are self indulgent.
It's not plot driven, because text doesn't have to be plot driven to be significant or to be art.
And that's the best thing about the book. It's honest. It's written for a teenage audience, not 30-somethings who are looking back on how ridiculous they were in highschool. Fourteen year olds are ridiculous sometimes, and they don't want to read a dried up thirty something's version of high school, they want honesty, they want riduculousness, they want what's really going on.
She's a talented, with fresh, unpretentious writing. The kind of person I'd like to be friends with.
Rating:
Summary: A mixed bag.
Review: Please Don't Kill The Freshman is not an instant classic. It does not express all teen angst in its few ages. It is not profound prose. It is certainly not Catcher in the Rye or The Outsiders. But neither is it [bad]. It is not overly angsty, hard to follow, or unique to its creator. Please Don't Kill The Freshman is a well-written (for a high school freshman) account of one girl's freshman year in high school. It's not a narrative because Zoe doesn't think in narrative form. It was not, as far as I know, written with the intent of publication. Zoe shouldn't be compared to S.E. Hinton because she wasn't trying to talk about being a teenager, she was trying to talk about being her. And did she do that well? For a high school freshman, yes. For a gifted high school freshman, yes. That's one of the hardest times to be different and it comes out in strange ways. But it isn't what I buy a book to read. Is this book worth a read? Yes. But if you go in with expectations set unreasonably high, you will have them dashed.
Rating:
Summary: hey, i liked it
Review: some books are good in a way that makes you want to give up writing. then there are some books that inspire you, that make you want to write until your hands fall off. that's the kind of book that Please Don't Kill The Freshman is. i mean -- yes, it's this girl's diary, and yes, there are entire pages that delve into near-total self-refrencing, but those parts are brilliant too. and her glosses on everyday marginalia -- the stuff that we go through a million times, like brushing our teeth and driving on highways -- she describes in details that are lucid and totally perceptive.
i'll tell you this: i was reading this book on the subway, got off all the way in the bronx, and was walking around the most suburban, boring place i could find. and i passed an old hollowed-out building and a 10-foot-tall round metal thing that i would've walked right by and never given a second glance.
but that day, i'd been reading, geez, i don't remember what part of the book -- where she describes Fun Car Games? where she talks about hasidic boy porn in the movie of The Chosen? -- and i wasn't taking anything for granted, and that day, they were the two most interesting and weird-looking and beautiful things in the universe.
so, yeah. this isn't the perfect book. but it's damn good. and it just might bouy you on to write your own.
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