Girl, 15: Charming but Insane
Limb, S.
2004
London: Bloomsbury Publishing
Age Range: 12 - 16
Genre: Romance, ChickLit
Rating: 3.5/5



Jess is a witty 15 year old with a disproportionate bum, a granola-hippy librarian mom, a dad that text-messages her instead of visits, an astoundingly beautiful/smart/fabulous best friend, and a hell of a lot of circumstantial humor (for a high-school kid). Her big chance to impress her crush, Ben Jones, one-up her perfect best friend, Flora, and get revenge on her good mate, Fred (even though she's not quite sure what they're fighting) is to do a stand-up routine at the school talent show. She's charming, she's funny, she's unstoppable! She's insane.

I'll be first to admit that this whole ChickLit thing is, well... a bit of an enigma to me. Wait! I read Bridget Jones' Diary an age ago.. does that count? It's not where I head in the bookshop or library, so I really haven't read much. All that aside, I do think that Girl, 15 is a good read. Not a great read, not a challenging read, not a read that will change your life. But a good, funny, enjoyable use of a few hours of your time. Jess is a fairly good representative of the odd, spiteful, charming and altogether strange time that age 15 actually is. And I really did want her to get the guy (the right one, that is). Particularly enjoyable about this book is the dialogue between Jess and her mate, Fred - it's witty and flambouyant and at times completely unnecessary, and I like that about language! Also, the text-messaged 'horror'scopes that Jess' father sends her every day are sometimes almost laugh-out-loud funny.

So, overall, the novel is goodish. A quick, dirty read that will lighten your day and probably never really be a part of your conscious memory. But, sometimes fluff is perfectly OK!