Review: Confessions of an Angry Girl by Louise Rozett

Review: Confessions of an Angry Girl by Louise Rozett

Rating: I still can’t decide how I feel about this book, which is both a terrific and a strange thing. I know I’ll be thinking about it for a while, and I know I’ll pick up the sequel.  But I’m still not entirely sure I enjoyed this book.

 

Rose Zarelli, self-proclaimed word geek and angry girl, has some confessions to make…

1. I'm livid all the time. Why? My dad died. My mom barely talks. My brother abandoned us. I think I'm allowed to be irate, don't you?

2. I make people furious regularly. Want an example? I kissed Jamie Forta, a badass guy who might be dating a cheerleader. She is now enraged and out for blood. Mine.

3. High school might as well be Mars. My best friend has been replaced by an alien, and I see red all the time. (Mars is red and "seeing red" means being angry—get it?)

Here are some other vocab words that describe my life: Inadequate. Insufferable. Intolerable.

(Don't know what they mean? Look them up yourself.)

(Sorry. That was rude.)

The Cover: Appropriately angsty. I'm digging that blue nail polish and that rainy business around the author's name. This cover says, "Don't look at me, I have too many feelings for you to comprehend, but I am deep and soulful and just quirky enough. Glass case of teenage emotions and all that jazz."

 

The Book: For me, the biggest strength of Confessions of an Angry Girl is the angry girl herself—Rose Zarelli, even if I did kind of want to slap her half the time. Every time she went on about her awesome vocab, I kind of was all, "For the record, Snarky Pants, I am FULLY AWRE of what the words insufferable and intolerable mean. Do not act like you vocabulary shit don't stink, okay? Great. Let's get on with this story." 

 

Beneath all her flaws, though, Rose is a really strong character. I was worried when I saw how young she is—fourteen and only just starting freshman year—but she’s got a maturity about that that makes it possible for an older teen to relate to her. Her thoughts are horrible and beautiful and painful and funny, all at the same time. She made me cry.  She made me laugh, too, but mostly she made me cry. And yes, she's angry, but let's be honest-- a lot of the things that happen to her really suck. I did not think her emotions were too out of line. She's got reasons to be ragey.

 

The writing is terrific. It’s tight, and it flows, and it managed to delve very neatly into Rose’s tangled emotions: her grief, her confusion, and most of all, her anger. I liked Rose’s complicated relationships with what remains of her family. And best of all, I loved the way the author explored Rose’s grief. It felt so genuine, and was truly heartbreaking. I think my favorite aspects of Confessions were Rose’s relationship with her mother and brother. She and Peter were sweet together, even (especially) when they didn’t get along. They felt real, which was totally refreshing.

The ending is definitely abrupt, but that’s because this is the first volume in a series. It’s not an action-packed, plot driven, cliff-hanger kind of story.  It’s about emotions, and Rose as a character. This is for people who love character-driven contemporary YA, without any real twists or special somethings thrown in. I think this is one of those cases where it’s just not my precise cup of tea. I was invested in Rose’s personal journey, but not so much in the plot, or lack thereof. I was worried for her when it came to the bullying (which I thought was portrayed excellently), the grieving, and her disintegrating friendship with Tracy, her horrible but human best friend, but where the book kind of lost me was the romance. It was kind of... weird.

No, not THAT weird. Seriously what are you doing.

I felt like there was a chapter missing in Rose and Jamie’s relationship. It was so weird and sudden. It wasn’t pure insta-love, but I didn’t see the development there, and I didn't see why they were acting like they had so much history and tension when really they didn’t even know each other. Jamie as a character particularly confused me. I seriously had no idea what his deal was. I don't know what he looks like. I couldn't even figure out what his social background was, both in school and out, till the very end. I love all of Rose’s feelings for him and the way she talked about him, but I never got him, necessarily.

A lot of the character’s reactions to things didn’t make sense to me. While I enjoyed reading about a high school that was so completely different from my own, I was also confused by it. I wished the author had taken a few moments to explain a little bit more about some things, like how the vo-tech program works (I had to Google it). Also, I was a teenager not that long ago, and while of lot of this book was very realistic in a way I adored—the drinking, the bullying, and the frank but misguided conversations about sex—some of their actions were not. Tracy and Matt, her jerk boyfriend, break up, but then twenty pages later they’re going to the dance together. And this is never explained. Seriously, I thought I had a chapter missing there too.

 

Everybody kind of just treats everybody else like crap all the time in this book. I was of two minds about that. I enjoyed how realistic a lot of Rose’s more negative emotions were. But on the other hand, it meant there wasn’t a lot to truly enjoy, except for the slam dunk writing and how amazingly nuanced the emotions are. Rose is your typical, long-suffering YA heroine-- sarcastic, smart, and way too good for the shallow loony bin that high school really can be.

 

Rose doesn't like people, and neither does Prince Harry (favorite gif
of all time, for the record).

 

This is all pretty non-positive stuff, but I really did like this book. The negative aspects of being a teenager are never glossed over. Her feelings are real and raw, and though the plot goes nowhere, I really felt like I was inhabiting her life. And for that, I’ve got to say that Rose’s confessions were ultimately a win for me, albeit a reserved one. I do think Rose and I would get along.