How Not To Spend Your Senior Year (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
Alright ladies & gentleman, i have officially finished reading this book! yay :) it was a pretty cute and unique book. Quite intriguing!GRADE : 3.5! and yes.. the 0.5 is necessary!Alright so here comes the review.. there will be SPOILERS..you've been warned!Wow so this book was so not how i had thought it would be. When i read the cover.. the "ghost" portion threw me off! However, when i read the book... oh wow did it make sense. This book was pretty different, in the way that i felt kinda "lame"... because... my idea of what this book might be was so OFF!:(BUT FEAR NOT! this story was cute and there were twists & turns and the fact of how Jo's life was so impacted by the death of her mother really is an integral part of this story & Jo is a really tough cookie! Jo provides good comic relief with her narration & i give props to her & i am glad she got to live in Old Mrs. Calloway HOUSE! but i really was diggin' CLAIRE! totally intelligent and artistic, working the black clothing, & being LOIS LANE ( thank you, Rob :D )So yea Jo was pretty cool.. totally messed by circumstances but she was alright :)Her dad is officially my most fav fictional DAD EVER! he is funny, concerned, understanding, & a total blast & the way he loves his daughter is really touching :)Alex. What can i say? he is like the guy everybody talks about but for some reason i have never met. Nice, athletic. Ya he has the whole blond blue eyed thing down a T ! he was pretty sweet & it was nice that he was in the story. But he needs to be decisive! he is like what, crushing on Jo? But has feelings for Elaine? So i am thinking it was subconscious what he had for Elaine ? but Jo had to be a "ghost" for him to truly realize his emotions? i mean when Jo and Alex kissed i never knew that the "look" he had, meant something more ....hmm... maybe i didn't quite get that part but,I really liked Alex. He'd be a really awesome pal & he deserves someone in this life... which in this case is ELAINE!Now on to Elaine... well Elaine & I both enjoy Starbucks drinks so that is a plus. She is like one of those people i know, w/o meeting them :P I think it's cute how much her & Alex like and appreciate each other but i gotta say when their relationship happened, it happened & i was surprised it did even though i could somewhat predict it. She had a cute little tendency of being jealous sometimes which i felt was just that.. CUTE! The R&J scene in drama class was some serious foreshadowing ;) &the prom scene was darling between them!And Mark London. That name sounds like a force of nature. So i don't really get why Jo and him like each other? i like how the book ends and it is cute but um... well i feel like their relationship just happened out of nowhere i suppose? but it still is cute in a more edgy way, "i hate you, i hate u 2, let's get it on" kinda way... he was intriguing though & i kinda like how Jo is with him.. she is pretty frisky! LAWL! & man if there are 2 things i can say about MARK.... he is persistent & determined!!! P.S: Didn't anyone else get the part where Mark saw Jo's picture and said "She looks nice." ?!?! HAHA!!!!! i love that part! i think it was the best part imo! if only knew then that Jo was Claire hmm...So yes, this book was cute & sweet and i think i learned a whole lot more about law than ever before thanks to this book.Thank you Cameron Dokey,I reckon i will be reading ur other books:)GO SIMON ROMANTIC COMEDIES !!! :)
Rebekah (age 12) was browsing my bookshelh and asked me if she would like this book. I told her I LOVED it, but then I decided that I'd better reread it before I gave it to her because I couldn't quite remember why I liked it so much. On second read, I still really, really like it, though I think Rebekah would do better to wait until she is in high school to read it. Jo O'Connor has constantly been on the move with her father for as long as she can remember. She usually is the new kid in her class two or three times a year. I am impressed with her adaptability and mature insights about how kids interact. But her senior year in a new school, she suddenly falls in love and doesn't want to move again. I love the dialogue, the funny situations, and most of all, I love the relationship she has with her father. So, you want to know why she has moved so often? Read the book. You'll enjoy it--perhaps a little far-fetched at times, but not so much that it ruins the book for me. A light, fun frolic with excellent relationships between friends and parents.
What do You think about How Not To Spend Your Senior Year (2003)?
Since her mother's death, Jo and her dad have spent their life constantly moving. Just when she finds a school where she fits in, they have to move again and this time its different- she needs to change her identity. She returns to school in disguise only to find that people have been seeing her "ghost". To make matters worse, she's got a hot reporter on her tail. Hilarity ensues. Jo's new identity, Claire Calloway, is sarcastic and spunky with some great one liners which makes it worth the read. The book was a simple read and perfect for a lazy afternoon.Overall: A-
—Kate (VerbVixen)
The idea of a humorous story involving Witness Protection has great potential, but this just fell apart about halfway through. That she would risk her Witness Protection and her father by returning to her old high school was ridiculous. Seattle is accurately depicted.I will get this for the library anyway; we have several of these Simon Romantic Comedies and the girls always want more love stories. These are the closest thing I've seen to the Sweet Dreams books I read in the '80s. There's one--o
—Laurie
Its been a few weeks since I read this book but I can still remember it. In a whole the book was very entertaining, just didn't have the punch I'd hoped for. Jo is a funny witty character. Her social insight of high school was funny and very true. I like how she didn't have self-pity about moving around and she wasn't mad at her dad over it either. Jo didn't think she was all knowledgeable and cultural because of all the places she had to been either. Now you might suspect her to be all insecure and a pushover but she isn't that either. She’s got a backbone but is nice too (yes you can be both).The whole setting was interesting. The plot had a steady pace and I laughed all along the way. There were some parts that were just not that upbeat but it ends after a while. The complaint that I have is that the book could've been so much more. It was a short read so I guess that I should have suspected as much. The whole criminal case didn't come up as often as I thought it would but that is not what kept the story from being all it could've been. I thought it was nice, entertaining, and funny. It a perfectly nice book; it just didn't have as much going on as I was hoping for.
—Valerie
