A continuation of our discussion of the book it’s all about us, the first novel in Shelley Adina’s All About Us series for Christian teen girls.

I left off yesterday saying my problem with it’s all about us was that it set out to deliver a sex book with “the added impact of a spiritual worldview” and it ended up not working as a sex book or as a Christian book or as a compelling story.

Why do I say this?

It didn’t make it as a sex book because the sex hinted at, never was delivered. The main character—Lissa, is a tease in the book and Adina comes across as tease in real life. At one point Lissa’s unsaved boyfriend tells her they can do stuff to make each other feel good without her breaking her promise to God to remain a virgin. “You can make me feel really good. I can make you feel the same way. And no loss of anything you want to keep, guaranteed.”

Lissa doesn’t slap him and walk out. No, she starts polling her friends to find out just how far she can go. Later she makes plans to spend the night with him in a private room and he gets there and after the two previous hot kissing scenes we’re hoping to see a little action, if you know what I mean.

Not only does Adina not give us any action onstage, she doesn’t tell us what the kids did offstage. Later Lissa makes it clear to the reader that “that hadn’t happened” meaning she didn’t go all the way. But after all the build up I think it’s a breach of contract for the author to not tell us exactly how far Lissa did go.

Instead of showing us how far, or even telling us how far, Adina has the whole “hot and bothered, we can’t keep our hands off of one another” crush, die. In one flash, it’s over. Amazingly the kids find they can keep their hands (and their lips) off of one another. So this book didn’t deliver on the sex.

But it didn’t work as a Christian book, either.

Because of all the sex in it, for one thing.

Huh? I thought there was no sex.

Oh, there was plenty of sex and panting and lust. Way more than any Christian girl had any business engaging in.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

I know.

Not enough sex for readers who want the sex and too much sex for readers who don’t want the sex. I’m not sure if it’s even possible to write a Christian teen/sex-saturated/chick lit book.

Adina sure gave it a good try. And she came up with a book that really kept me turning pages. Amazing, considering I HATE this kind of book. I’m telling you, if you like silly teen chick lit books about self-absorbed girls with too much money and time on their hands, you’ll love this one. It’s well done. It’s witty and the dialogue really snaps.

And Adina does a good job of preaching without preaching, I think. She does have Lissa learn that she should have been praying instead of fantasizing. I give her a great big round of applause for that. Lissa was shallow and stupid and she traded God in for a hottie. She was sorry later. Good deal.

And yet the whole book falls short because the premise doesn’t work as a Christian book or as a compelling story.

The main character is a rich girl (her father’s a movie director) who has to leave her high school and all her friends and start over in eleventh grade at a boarding school for rich kids. She wants to be in the popular crowd like she was before she moved.

That’s it.

Her goal is to be accepted by the popular kids. What if she fails in this goal? Will she die? Will she suffer physical pain? Will her parents disown her? Will she lose something important. . .like, does she have a bet and if she loses it she loses her virginity? No, nothing like that. Nothing at all, in fact. If she can’t get in with the popular kids she just has to live as one of the other kids.

Who cares?

She name drops constantly. (It’s hard to root for a girl who is on a first name basis with George Lucas and Angelina Jolie.) Her toughest day was when she had to pull an all-nighter because she’d been too busy fooling around with her hottie boyfriend to do her homework on time, and her teacher, monster that he was, wouldn’t give her an extension. After that harrowing experience she has to go out for some serious “retail therapy.” OK, I don’t know about you, but I find the whole retail therapy deal to be more offensive than the hottie boyfriend trying to talk her into going everywhere short of all the way. He’s not a Christian. He’s pretty noble telling her it’s OK with him if she doesn’t want to have sexual intercourse. It’s not surprising or offensive that he wants some other kind of intercourse.

But for her to turn to retail therapy when she’s down and for no one to ever suggest that this is grossly sinful really bothers me. I mean what’s the difference between turning to retail therapy and turning to drugs or sex or rock and roll? Turning to anything but God is idolatry. And yet, even the strong Christian girl (comparatively) calls shopping “retail therapy” and doesn’t seem to see anything wrong with spending thousands of dollars on a dress and finding some kind of soul-soothing satisfaction in that.

Add to the shallow character goals, the obvious plot resolution and the too-easy wrap up with the bothersome, unbelieving, hottie boyfriend who started out nice and conveniently turned nasty, and you have a story that doesn’t quite satisfy.

And I hate to say that because I think Shelly Adina is a great writer and I think she’s trying to do something good for teen girls with these books.

I hope to find in future books that she digs a little deeper. She’s certainly talented enough to pull off some great, memorable books.

Tomorrow (or the next day. Whatever! You’re not paying for this so don’t even think about complaining if I don’t post on time) I’ll tell you why, even with all the negatives I’ve thrown at you, I think mothers should buy this book and read and discuss it with their daughters.

It’s All About Us, a novel by Shelley Adina, brings out mixed emotions in me. So I guess I’ll start with the disclaimer. I’m a long, long way removed from high school crush days. Also, back when I was in high school we drank soda. If someone had offered me a mocha macchiato I would have thought he wanted to give me some kind of machete used for slicing coffee beans from their branches, perhaps.

And I was poor. So were all the other kids. This was back, even, before kids started getting their Nike’s stolen. Or their Air Jordans. (Whatever.) We wore ripped up elephant bell jeans with suede waffle stompers. And no one wanted to steal those puppies.

So here I am thirty-some years later and I’m reading a book about a rich girl at a boarding school full of rich kids. They drive expensive cars and they rub shoulders with stars. And our girl’s problem? The thing that is supposed to make me root for her?

She. . .uh. . .she wants to be popular.

Color me unsympathetic. And know that when I say the writing is compelling and the dialogue is great, I’m not saying that because I want to give the author a break. I don’t love the book, but the truth is that it’s very easy to read and the author is quite talented.

If you are a teen girl and you like reading about teen girls having crushes and longing for riches and beauty and popularity, and I suspect most teen girls do like to read about such things, then you’ll like this book.

Here’s an excerpt that will give you a glimpse of how well the dialogue flows and how fun this book is to read.

“Did it ever occur to you that the only fun those girls get is from making other people miserable?”

“That’s not true.” Not entirely. “The whole committee is working for a good cause. I’ll get community service credits. We need twenty hours every term, you know.”

Gillian sighed. “Missing the point.”

Don’t care. “Are you coming to lunch?”

The book is witty, and it moves fast. The author assumes her readers are not idiots and she doesn’t over explain, but she puts everything into context so that even if we’ve never heard of the designers she refers to, we understand the point she’s making.

Another good thing about the book, I think, is that the author is writing about things girls want to read about and she’s doing it from a Christian worldview. The publisher makes no bones about the fact that these books are the Christian versions of the Gossip Girl books. Well compare covers, for starters:

And then there’s this from the publisher:

Young Adult Fiction is Heating Up!

All About Us is sophisticated, edgy and relevant for today’s high school teens

That kind of language makes me want to rebel. Sophisticated, edgy, and relevant mean different things to different people. After reading the book did I find it sophisticated? Um. I think shallow might be a better word here. Edgy? Not for most teens, probably. Relevant? Well, if you’re super rich, and beautiful and have no real problems, maybe.

But the press release continues:

This fresh new series is sure to be a page turner for any girl who wants a book that is trendy, sophisticated, and relevant. Written in Adina’s realistic and quirky style, the books give readers a peek into the sometimes intimidating but always fascinating life of high school—with the added impact of a spiritual worldview.

Now this is where I’m torn. Yes, girls are reading gossip girl books and they are full of sex. Graphic, hot tub sex scenes and more, I’ve heard. And I do want girls to have an alternative to that. I do want someone to look at teen sex through Christian glasses and write a story about how Christian girls deal with sex. Because, let’s face it, girls, Christian or otherwise, are all thinking about sex these days. Unless you are an isolationist home schooler (in which case you aren’t reading this review) your daughters are thinking about sex and dreaming about the hot guy at school. My own daughter is home schooled and more naive than most and she hasn’t escaped the influence of our sexually preoccupied society. No, she is a regular girl with a crush of her own on a dorky kid at youth group that she thinks is cute and funny.

But here’s my problem with it’s all about us. It sets out to deliver a sex book with “the added impact of a spiritual worldview” and ends up not working as a sex book or as a Christian book or as a compelling story.

But I’ve carried on long enough today so I’ll get to my specific complaints tomorrow.

(go to part two)

I posted today on my other blog a little bit about the book it’s all about us.

I won’t repeat the post here. Since this blog is about children’s books and not about teen sexuality, I figured I’d give you all a break from my harping on the topic. (I’m worse than an ex-smoker, huh? We all seem want to go after those sinners who are still engaging in the one we gave up.)
But just in case you really want to hear me complaining about the problem of teen sexuality, go on over and check out Teen Girls Kissing.

Oh, and now that I read that title…man I’ll probably get a bunch of people searching for lesbian porn, surfing into my site. Urgh.

OK. You slackers who still haven’t seen the movie–too bad if you get spoilers.

We went opening night. Me, the old grumpy one, my son, fifteen, and my daughter, fourteen. We all liked this one way better than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

And yet…

I hadn’t read the book in eight years so I sat through the movie amazed that I had forgotten so much. “I didn’t remember Peter being such a jerk,” I thought.

I didn’t remember that he attacked the city, either.

So I came home and pulled out the book and flipped through the chapters and it looks to me like half the movie wasn’t in the book and half the book wasn’t in the movie.

The movie worked. I loved it. I can’t help but wonder what Lewis would have thought of it, though.

What about you? Did you like it? Did Peter’s arrogance and sulkiness bother you? I always thought he was the noble one and I was a little shocked by his fighting and his bad attitude. Kind of the way I was bothered in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when the kids broke the window and instead of taking their lumps they ran away. That didn’t fit in with the picture I had in my head of those four Pevensie kids.

Edit: I should have checked Noel’s blog before I posted. Of course she posted a great little review the day after the movie opened. She’s so efficient, that one.