The character of Penny hits you immediately: she's a no-nonsense, high-achieving 16-year-old set on a career as a Pulitzer-winning journalist. She knows what she wants, knows how to get it, and knows she's right about everything. Her journo's intuition leads her to what she imagines will be the jump-start to her reporting career: a profile on a fellow love-shy student who posts on a blog as PEZZimist.The storyline is somewhat predictable as Penny interviews the boys at her school, however the humour of the writing, Penny's obvious blindness to what's going on around her, and the well-formed characters made this an extremely easy book to read.The romanticised view of journalist reminded me a lot of myself at her age, and after 20 years working in the field Penny's rosy view cracked me up repeatedly! I love Lili Wilkinson's books, but this particular one just didn't do it for me and I think that that was mostly because the main character was annoying and self-centred. I just couldn't connect with her. At the end she got better but that was only in the last 20 pages or so and you didn't really have time to like the new Penny. I don't like the idea of 'love-shy', it feels like something else 'nice boys' come up with to excuse why they get put in the 'friend-zone' and all that bogus. This book was slightly redeeming in the whole battle with anxiety thing because I get that. I really do. And I think Wilkinson is a genuinely nice person who wanted to address this issue because it isn't widely recognised as a mental health issue as other equally important things like depression. She also explores how being gay is not a choice and that you just have to let people be who they are. It was also refreshing to see the two main characters not 'fix' each other and get together to be happily ever after but instead help each other to help themselves and not be so superficial as to think that that is what love is.
What do You think about Liebesschüchtern (2013)?
3.5I really enjoyed this. A nice change of pace, I will definately read her others
—Ashley
Loved the quirky characters and the snappy humour. A great read.
—zeelia
