Plan B

Plan B
Author: Jenny O'Connell
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/MTV
Release Date: March, 2006

Vanessa Carlisle is a planner, and the next year of her life has been plotted to the last second. Finish senior year at private high school Cabot Academy. Get acceptance into Yale. Spend the summer traveling around Europe with her best friend, Taylor. Then head to Yale, where she'll join her boyfriend, Patrick, who already attends as a freshman. She's dotted every i and crossed every T.

What Vanessa doesn't plan for, however, is learning that she has a half-brother who not only is coming to live with them and attend Cabot High, but just so happens to be a bad-boy TV star. Reed Vaughn has gotten into trouble one time too many, and his mother sends him to Chicago to gain some new perspective. Which means Vanessa must go from only child to sharing the spotlight with a Hollywood star.

From the outset, Vanessa resents Reed. She doesn't want him to come, she knows she isn't going to like him, and she determines she's not going to let his presence change one thing about her life. However, she soon finds that her carefully laid plans start to unravel.

The premise of this book - finding out you have a brother who happens to be a famous TV star - really drew me in. I couldn't wait to see how Vanessa handled the sudden fame, dealing with starstruck friends, and maybe even learning that Reed was just a normal teenage guy deep down.
However, Reed remained pretty much a background character throughout the entire story. We never get to know much about him or how he feels about moving to Chicago or what he thinks about being a star. In fact, Reed comes across as a pretty decent guy, and I felt rather sorry for him when nearly every guy at Cabot treats him like a threat and the only friend he seems to make is the one girl at school who doesn't own a television.

Too, Vanessa's immediate and inexplicable hatred toward Reed is never fully explained or justified. From the minute she learns about Reed, she determines that he will be nothing but a problem for her. She treats him rudely at best and is outright disloyal and cruel at other times. However, I never found Reed's behaviour towards Vanessa to be anything deserving of such hostility. In truth, she often comes across as a spoiled brat, far more of a diva than Reed. I can't say that I ever liked Vanessa or felt sorry for her situation because I never fully understood her problems to begin with.

A big part of the story focused on Vanessa's attempts to continue her relationship with boyfriend Patrick, who was attending Yale as a freshman. Unfortunately, every twist and turn this storyline followed was completely predictable.

Vanessa's journey throughout the story involves her ability to accept that sometimes things don't always go according to plan, and sometimes that opens doors for things to be better. While learning to live with an unexpected sibling requires Vanessa to adapt, I'm not sure that Reed was the catalyst to her changes. Over the course of the story, she experiences troubles with Patrick that had nothing to do with Reed. Ultimately, Vanessa fights against accepting Reed as a part of her life, and I would argue that she only barely concedes to this situation. She doesn't change because she's learned anything from Reed. She changes because she realizes she has no other choice. Ultimately, her Grand Plan is only affected slightly.

One question I had after reading the story was why O'Connell chose to make Reed a famous TV star rather than just a normal guy who comes to live with Vanessa and her parents. Reed's fame added nothing to the story. Granted, he was immediately accepted at Cabot High because of his status. But because this aspect of Reed was never fully explored - the situation never examined from his point of view - and it never truly affected Vanessa in any direct way, I still don't know why O'Connell chose this particular direction. It left me feeling as if a great opportunity was missed.

This is the second book written by O'Connell that involved Chicago as a setting, with Boston playing a strong secondary role. (The first was The Book of Luke.) I know from the information given about O'Connell that she currently lives in Boston, thus I can see her focus on that area. While the Chicago portions of the book are written as if O'Connell has done thorough research, I do wonder if she's ever actually lived here. Something about her sense of setting is a bit forced, as if she's relying on guidebooks rather than her own experience. I could be wrong about this.

O'Connell's saving grace is her ability to tell a story cleanly. Her voice is easy to read, and while her characters frustrated me, they were well written. The dialogue is natural and the narrative well paced. I only wish she'd do better in executing these wonderful premises that are promised on the back cover copy. With her books, I always feel like I've ordered a hot fudge sundae only to get served a fruit yogurt cup instead.

Rating: Held My Attention
Status of Series: This is a stand-alone title

The Book of Luke

The Book of Luke
Author: Jenny O'Connell
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/MTV
Release Date: April, 2007

"Nice Girl" Emily Abbott has really gotten handed a raw deal. Half-way through her senior year in high school, her parents decide to move the family from Chicago back to Boston. She's just received a letter from her first choice college, Brown, telling her she's been deferred. And on the morning that the family is scheduled to leave, her first real boyfriend, Sean, breaks up with her. Too add insult to injury, her father announces at the airport that, in fact, he's not moving with the rest of the family but rather staying behind in Chicago, to tie up some loose ends. Code for separation.

But when Emily arrives back at her old school, she finds that not much has changed. Her old best friends, Lucy and Josie, are there to welcome her back into the fold. And come to find out, they've been experiencing their fair share of boy troubles as well. In fact, Josie was just dumped - via e-mail - by hottest guy on campus, Luke Preston.

Fueled by their frustrations, the girls decide to write a guide-book for guys, a how-to-manual describing all the things boys do that drive girls crazy and how they can change for the better. Once this manual is done, the girls plan to put it in the senior class's time capsule so future generations can benefit from their knowledge.

But for some reason, Emily, Josie and Lucy determine that they need to test out their theories on a real live boy. And who better but the jerk Luke Preston? Emily is drafted into becoming Henry Higgins to Luke's Eliza Doolittle. Ostensibly, she will get Luke to fall in love with her, work her magic in changing him into the greatest boyfriend ever, then break up with him in order to add the humiliation cherry to the top of the cake.

As you can predict, this Grand Plan falls apart when Emily finds out that maybe Luke isn't so bad after all. In fact, he's actually kind of wonderful, and before she knows what's happening, Emily feels stuck between what she wants for herself and what she thinks she's supposed to be doing for the sake of her friends and for all girl-kind.
As a heroine, Emily had a great voice. She's easy to relate too, and despite all of the crap she's handed, she doesn't whine excessively. She constantly describes herself as a "nice girl", although other than spewing bits from her mother's etiquette books (her mother is a professional etiquette expert), I didn't find her any nicer or meaner than any other character.

My problem with this book is that the premise of the guide book is very flimsy. As it was described, this how-to manual the girls are writing is a list of observations of the things that boys do that drive girls crazy and suggestions to the boys on what not to do. When the threesome determine that the book needs to be "tested", I was thoroughly confused. The guide-book is not a how-to manual for girls, on things they can do to change the boys in their lives. So how was Emily supposed to "test" it on Luke?

Indeed, I never did see Emily testing Luke in any way. In fact, several times he did things she didn't like (standing her up for a dance, not calling her when he said he would), and she ignored her initial urges to call him out for acting like a jerk. Other than a handful of suggestions - like telling him to keep an umbrella in his car for rainy days and not sharing her french fries when he acted as if it were only natural that she would - it seemed Emily did most of the changing when she accepted Luke exactly as he was. In fact, the real test Emily seemed to engage in was to see if she could act in such a way as to get Luke to fall in love with her.

Too, the conflict in the book is based on a very weak base. Emily supposedly feels conflicted because 1) she's falling for Luke when she's supposed to be re-training him and 2) Luke used to date Josie and hurt Josie's feelings. If the focus of Emily's distress would have been on the fact that she'd developed real feelings for her best friend's ex-boyfriend, I would have been satisfied. As it stood, I never understood why, once she realized Luke was actually a pretty nice guy that she genuinely liked, Emily never put the brakes on and told her friends that it wasn't working.

So as the story continued, Emily's increasing conflict became more and more frustrating.

Additionally, in the end, Emily is left holding 100% of the blame when things spiral out of control. Despite the fact that the idea for the guidebook as well as the desire for Emily to be the one to test it out on Luke belonged to all three girls equally, everyone turns to Emily when it comes time to pass out blame and anger.

While this book kept me turning the pages, wondering how it would all work out, I did so with a lot of frustrations. Only Emily as a character kept me from not finishing it. I like her well enough even though I thought much of what she did towards the end of the book veered awfully close to Too Stupid Too Live behaviour. Add in a healthy dose of Big Mis that drives the conflict and I can't say that this was my favorite book ever.

Rating: Struggled to Finish
Status of Series: This is a stand-alone title