This one was a quick, fluffy read. Even though I usually dislike books
where the female protagonist keeps making silly mistakes and getting
into messy situations again and again, I could sometimes understand
Natalie and her reasons for being a little stupid. :P
The following review has some spoilers so proceed at your own risk So
basically, the story is about Natalie who's a perfect daughter,
student, leader and (according to her) a perfect best friend who thinks
she is very much in control of her life and knows who she is and what
she wants.
However, pretty quickly, things start going downhill in
her life when her best friend actually starts standing up for herself
and stops agreeing to her opinions and becomes more social. Natalie
herself had very little friends courtesy of her closed-off and proud
nature, so needless to say she starts getting worried as she doesn't
wants share her best friend with anybody but then Amelia, her best
friend gets tired of her prissy attitude and leaves her. Since her life
was quickly becoming far from perfect, she needed something (or someone)
to distract herself from all this mess and then comes Connor. Hot,
confident, sweet and totally, totally lovable! Natalie starts this
friends-with-benefits sort of thing with him, although you cant really
call them friends since they hardly talk publicly.
Then
(predictably) because of some silly decisions, the once-perfect girl
finds herself the centre of the gossip about her secret late night
adventures with Connor. She gets mad, not because of her ruined image,
but because she knew how many people she had disappointed who used to
believe in her. Finally, she realizes that no matter how much she
convinced herself otherwise, she had to accept herself sometime and stop
hiding. She accepts the facts that she had been a crappy bestfriend,
was in love with Connor, was far from perfect and definitely "That Kind
Of Girl".
Personally, I found Natalie reallyyyyy egoistic and
confused and nice at the same time. Many a times I found myself rolling
my eyes or face-palming myself because of her stupid-ness but the way
the author wrote this story made me really, really like it. Natalie
might have been too much of a feminist at times but she was caring and
soft too. One moment I was pulling at my hair for being so rude to
Connor (whom I've fallen in love with) and in another moment I could hug
her for being so sweet to people she cared so much about. There were so
many funny parts where I laughed out loud (and recieved
"are-you-crazy?" looks from other people in the library) and then there
was the emotional last part where Natalie and Amelia reconcile where I
nearly cried even though many people wouldn't really find it that
emotional. But what can I say? Forgiveness and reconciling best friends
always fill my heart with a little too much joy.. :P
Spencer was my
favourite character in the story. She was a freshman who Natalie used to
babysit was she was little. Spencer was smart, confident and knew what
she wanted from the beginning. Even though most of the time she
pretended to be a little too grown-up for someone her age,I admired her
leadership qualities and sunny nature. At times she made much more sense
than Natalie which I think made the story even more interesting.
Anyway,
overall I liked this book but I would've liked it even more if Natalie
had made fewer mistakes and was a little less egoistic and was nicer to
Connor who was there by her side no matter what. I liked the ending and
the way finally things turned out for Natalie and everyone around her.
:D
