Rating: 
Summary: Interesting idea, but basically it's garbage
Review: A friend who is a fan of Ariano's web site loaned this to me. I thought the premise was amusing, but the novelty of the idea wears off damn quickly, and I more or less skimmed most of it. I can't believe self-indulgent crap like this gets published when actual writers with actual talent have a hard time breaking in. The bottom line is: Sometimes an idea should just stay an idea; when it comes to fruition, you realize how lame it really is. Oh, well, I suppose Ariano got her cheap thrill, made 2 or 3 bucks and will now hopefully sink into obscurity. (And, sorry to be petty, but -- Man! -- Check out the mug on her!)
Rating:
Summary: It Definitely Does Not Follow
Review: Ariano is just so full of herself. My first whiff of this book was strangely reminiscent of Drew Barrymore's equally whiny "Little Girl Lost." The difference is that, despite still having wild child tendencies (even now at age 30), Barrymore actually demonstrated that she could learn and evolve. Ariano (aka Wing Chun) has failed on all fronts.
Having been a teenager of the 1980s, I find it impossible to sympathize. I encountered a level of brutality and ostracism that would blow her mind. (Even Revenge of the Nerds was a better example of 1980s misfit youth life.) I also find it hard to be anything other than bored or annoyed at her mindset.
"A Bad Teen Novel" is a mild way to put it. If you have a copy, burn it or shred it or get your money back. A minus five-star rating is the mildest way to go.
Rating: 
Summary: And it was.
Review: Ariano's blend of youthful naivete and piercing insight lends the text a strangely wistful gravitas which...okay, not really. It's totally Smurfy, actually, but in the best possible way, like a day-long marathon of early "90210" episodes. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll shoplift at Esprit. The Bad Teen Novel rules all.
Rating:
Summary: To speculate about some of the reviews...
Review: As if the book wasn't self-indulgent enough, she put a picture of her junior-high self on the COVER. It's just not nearly as funny as the writer thinks it is.Don't buy this when you can read much better journals and teen memoirs on the web for free.
Rating:
Summary: A waste of time
Review: As if the book wasn't self-indulgent enough, she put a picture of her junior-high self on the COVER. It's just not nearly as funny as the writer thinks it is. Don't buy this when you can read much better journals and teen memoirs on the web for free.
Rating: 
Summary: not just a bad teen novel?
Review: As someone who has one (more than one actually) bad books written when she was a teen tucked away for her grandkids to perhaps stumble across and be amused by, I don't think there's anything wrong with keeping your early writing efforts around. The problem lies when you decide they are good enough (or bad enough) to see the light of day. As someone who is no stranger to rejection slips that assure me that good novels are regularly turned away due to reasons other than the writer's ability, I would love to know how this book got published. The right connections? Maybe. It's not like the author is a brand name like Grisham or King, who no matter how many critics trash their books, sell merrily and well. This book is exactly what it claims to be, but I still think the place for a nonfamous writer's juvenalia is the Web or in a trunk. You can get plenty of bad (or not so bad) teen prose just by surfing the Web, you certainly don't need to PAY to read it. Indeed many famous writers in the past have been strenuously opposed to publishing their early novels after the writers became household names. Why, oh why, couldn't this writer wait until she had something truly worthy of being published?
Rating:
Summary: Point? Well, it's what we all can be bored by in our own
Review: basements, attics, closets, or memories. I gave up halfway through this thing because it is exactly what it says it is, no less, and, more significantly, absolutely no more. Believe the billing. If you want to read a bad teen novel, read your own diary, get bored after fifty pages, put it away, and spend the dinero on a tasty takeout dinner. Because there's no insight, humor, or interest here that isn't in the most banal journal of the most ordinary schoolgoer of the late 1980s. Too bad there isn't some creativity or imagination here. Then again, the movies have applied plenty of creativity and imagination to that period and generation already -- it isn't like there isn't more to say, but to do it again will take someone with a truly fresh approach and the intelligence to execute it with originality. That ain't here.
Rating:
Summary: Esprit lives on...
Review: For all of you former teenage frustrated writers, this book's for you! Take a walk down memory lane for all your 80's teen angst and sexual frustration. Relieve those moments of teenage terror and horror of your teachers... Uhh... I sound like a character from Ariano's "Untitled: Bad Teen Novel" which certainly lives up to it's name. Have some fun and pick up this one!
Rating:
Summary: Who knew bad could be so good.
Review: For anyone who had visions of literary grandeur in their teens and churned out page after page of drama, angst and sexuality, this book is for you. Written by a 13-year-old in the heyday of the 1980s, the book details the soap-opera lives of a group of Canadian teenage girls as they seem to battle with almost all of the Seven Deadly Sins. Greed, envy, lust -- you name it, they were involved in it in one way or another. The charm of the book lies in the fact that the writer had no experience with pretty much any of the topics she wrote about -- as she readily admits. Those who wrote their own Bad Teen Fiction will laugh in embarassed recognition of the writing styles -- from the detailed clothing/hair descriptions to the oft-times unrealistic dialogue and the completely unrealistic sex scenes. The rather abrupt ending leaves the reader craving more, but the epilogue is rife with drama (and unintentional laughs). Maybe the ending will encourage readers to write their own story continuations -- or at least pull out and dust off their own Bad Teen Fiction. After all, if this Bad Teen Novel can be published, why can't yours?
Rating:
Summary: To speculate about some of the reviews...
Review: For the reviewer who asked how this got published: look at the publisher. It is a self-published book. Print-on-demand, what have you. Writers Club Press will take any piece of tripe as long as you fork over some cash. This book is so blatantly, "Look at me, I'm so hilarious and can poke fun at myself and my horrendous writing!" That doesn't make the book any less bad. The sarcastic self-awareness is just a thin veil for what really is horrible writing. It works for maybe one page. Or maybe one paragraph. I'm guessing that the ones leaving the glowing reviews are personal friends of Tara, or those on her website, Fametracker. And they're also the ones marking the less-than-stellar reviews as "Not Helpful." Very mature. Oh well. I guess that'll happen to this one, as well. We'll see. There's a reason why most people self-publish. It's because no self-respecting traditional publisher would accept them. Sure, there are exceptions (for instance, if you want to only publish a small collection of cookbooks for your cooking group), but is this one of them? I don't think so.
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