Scan barcode
A review by b0hemian_graham
American Girls by Alison Umminger
5.0
I loved this novel, no bones about it. It's one of the best realistic YA novels I've read. The Manson Family seems to be the trend du jour for YA, given that Emma Cline's The Girls also focused on a Mansonesque cult, but I thought this one had more heart and was better written. It's deliciously snarky in parts, and you both love and hate the choices the characters make. Not just Anna and Delia, but minor characters like Anna's mom and her best friend Doon. They're real, complex people. Anna didnt't feel like a Mary Sue, or just a bland, uninteresting character. She seemed like a real teenage girl who was dealing with a lot of issues, and just felt completely lost. 15 is such a rough age.
There's a minor bit of romance, but it isn't the primary focus of the novel, which pleases me because a lot of realist YA, as in, not set in a fantasy world of some sorts, has a ridiculous amount of romance. Also, the whole LA setting didn't feel contrived and wasn't cliched. The parallels between Anna and the girls of the Manson family were an intriguing plot theme that I wasn't sure would work, or how Umminger was going to write such a novel, but it worked incredibly well. Not only that, we had a total tear down of Hollywood's ideas of female actors of all ages, and critiques of the "Disney machine." Everythin just fit perectly together. Also, I actually liked Roger despite his skeeviness. I could definitely draw some parallels between him and Polanski, whom he pretty much idolised. I really cannot articulate how much I really enjoyed this novel. It's
There's a minor bit of romance, but it isn't the primary focus of the novel, which pleases me because a lot of realist YA, as in, not set in a fantasy world of some sorts, has a ridiculous amount of romance. Also, the whole LA setting didn't feel contrived and wasn't cliched. The parallels between Anna and the girls of the Manson family were an intriguing plot theme that I wasn't sure would work, or how Umminger was going to write such a novel, but it worked incredibly well. Not only that, we had a total tear down of Hollywood's ideas of female actors of all ages, and critiques of the "Disney machine." Everythin just fit perectly together. Also, I actually liked Roger despite his skeeviness. I could definitely draw some parallels between him and Polanski, whom he pretty much idolised. I really cannot articulate how much I really enjoyed this novel. It's