Perfect World

Rating:
Summary: Challenges of Maturity
Review:
Perfect World is a riveting fiction novel that tells about the challenges of adjusting to high school and becoming more
mature. Author Brian James speaks from a fourteen or fifteen year old girls point of view. The book is set in a town that has perfectly planned out houses and evenly spaced trees.

Everyone in town thinks they are perfect, and they do not talk about problems. The main character, Lacie Johnson, has many family issues though. Her father committed suicide two years earlier in their bathroom. Her mother works two jobs, and Lacie is forced to stay home to babysit her younger brother, Malky. Lacie's best friend has always been a girl named Jenna. Things have changed, and Jenna is more interested in boys and being socially accepted. Lacie is not as concerned about those things. Jenna meets a boy named Avery, and he introduces her to a boy named Benji. But as Lacie and Benji become closer, Lacie and Jenna start to grow apart. Lacie struggles to see the good in the world and feels like she is loosing everyone close to her. She starts to feel like she is going crazy just like her father.

The book is written differently than most books. The sentence structure differs. Instead of using periods the author connects similar thoughts with varying amounts of periods; they are similar to ellipses. For example, a paragraph with about fourteen lines of text has only a single period. This book is also for an audience either about to enter high school or just recently started high school. The issues are better suited for them. Some parts of the book contain sexual acts but
nothing sexually explicit.

The most interesting part of book is how the author is a man, and yet he tells the story from a teenage girl's point of view. Brian James treats the subject of fitting into high school and finding out who you are as a serious issue. As I read the book I also found it hard to put down. It keeps the reader interested in what will happen next. It shows how the world we live in may not be so perfect at all. You have to look inside yourself to find out what a perfect world is to you, and strive to get there given the circumstances that are handed to you.

Reviewed by Kathleen O'Reilly for Flamingnet Book Reviews.
For more preteen, teen, and young adult book recommendations and reviews, please visit www.flamingnet.com.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but not captivating
Review: It's an interesting story about a teenage girl who doesn't fit in, who doesn't play by the "mean girl" rules, and who is scared and curious about her sexuality. Lacie is coping with the suicide of her father, her best friend's changing priorities, and her first boyfriend. It's a bit melodramatic and trite, but overall a well conceived novel that will appeal to young girls.