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Read The Luckiest Girl (2003)

The Luckiest Girl (2003)

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Rating
3.88 of 5 Votes: 3
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ISBN
0060532998 (ISBN13: 9780060532994)
Language
English
Publisher
harper teen

The Luckiest Girl (2003) - Plot & Excerpts

This is another of those classics that I never had heard of before and that I missed originally on the Classics challenge at The Midnight Garden when I was the readalong book in March.But wanting to complete the challenge and not fail it, I decided I needed to read a book that wasn't too long, and went for this one!Shelley was a very sweet teenager but her mental processes being so taken up with boys did manage to annoy me on occasion. But the moment she started arguing with her mum about the slick vs the raincoat and reacted by destroying the roses... I decided that I liked her more! I was never too explosive as a teenager but I could really understand the frustration and the differences between mother and daughter. I still have them today with my own mother, but I am the kind that doesn't really argue but end up doing whatever I want... ;)Shelley moves to California for a school year with her mum's college roommate, which seems like a fantastic adventure for a sixteen year old girl that had never travelled on her own or spent time away from home. I really loved that she appreciated everything and looked at her trip and all the differences as wondrous instead of comparing them and finding them lacking with what was "back home". Her enthusiasm popped from the page and was quite contagious too.Seeing San Sebastian and the new school through her eyes was quite refreshing, and although her obsession with Phil was a bit eye-rolling-inducing, she felt very genuinely a teenager, because at some point and in varied degrees... we were all obsessed with boys (or girls).I loved how Shelley grew and learnt some lessons during the course of the book, how she became to understand herself better seeing Katie and her reactions, and how that gave her perspective to her past and current actions, making her understand her mother better.Shelley also realized why she felt like she got tired of Jack and why she didn't feel like things were working out with her dream boy in San Sebastian and realizes that crushes when you don't have many things in common can get pretty awkward, and sometimes the guy you think of as a friend and enjoy sharing things with is the one you can be with and love in the end.What I found extremely sweet and that dated this story more than anything else was the way Shelley thought about the boys and the relationships, how it was all "going steady" and there were so few kisses and dates were more doing things together and the boys going into the house to meet the parents (or responsible adults) compared to what contemporary books of today show, with more absent parents, more uninformed parents and loads more kissing! ;)A very sweet read that I ended up liking more than I expected at first. 3.5 to 4 stars for thi one.

I did not want to leave San Sebastian along with Shelly! Yet, at the same time, I wanted to follow her home to Oregon and find out what happens during her senior year in high school. Also, to see how Oregon feels after the barren-desert-spotted-with-orange-groves world she'd just experienced.Fascinating for its depiction of a time (how simple was a relationship with the opposite sex!) as well as for its view of SoCal. Sort of sad Shelley stays so isolated and doesn't pop over to Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Hollywood to see what's up in those places in the late 1950's. But also fascinating in the world depicted: a family struggling to make ends meet on a father's teacher's salary, living in a makeshift house created from an old boarding house, mom making the daughter's dress because it will be half the cost of store bought--all while sitting in the middle of an orange grove that we know will become a subdivision in the not-to-distant future. And why wouldn't the families sell out as much as they might like the fruit ranching life? No groves means no smudge pot nights.Two really important lessons in the book: 1. Mom is often coming from the place "I don't want my child to grow up" while the child sees the situation as "I"m trying to grow up and I need to be free of parental control." The result is often both saying: "You just don't understand." 2. It doesn't matter if the guy you are with is the "cool guy", the one all the other girls want, the one who will give you the most status for being with him--what matters is that you share each others interests, have fun together, enjoy being together. Finally: would like to have seen those orange groves in bloom.

What do You think about The Luckiest Girl (2003)?

I wish I could have been half the young woman at sixteen that Shelley is, honestly, and whenever I read this, I hope I might someday be her yet. I didn't read most of Cleary's YA novels until adulthood (the exception is Fifteen, which I read at ten or so, in the 80's) and I was struck even as an adult by what wonderful novels they are. Cleary has a way of identifying and celebrating the average girl, and now, when everyone is supposed to be above average, it's a good lesson that it hasn't always been this way and wasn't worse when it was. One of the best things about this novel is how clear it is that Shelley is starting out wanting to be like everyone else--to have the same raincoat as all the kids have, the same clothes (and not the blue wool-and-rabbit-hair dress that her mother wants her to have), the same dates. She wants to fit in at her new school and is embarrassed when she knows she stands out as foreign. But by the end of the story, she understands how little any of that matters; she's becoming her own person, seeing the boy she really likes and not the one that will just make the other girls jealous of her, doing the things that interest them both. A lot of people never learn that, and it's so important. I wish I knew what Shelley became when she grew up.
—Nicole

I'm a big fan of realism. I love a good, gritty novel that doesn't pull punches about the reality of life, and the harsher the lesson learned, the more invested I get.But there must still be a little idealism in my cynical, little heart yet (probably nestled next to the part of me that loves puppies and babies and lolcats) because I absolutely loved The Luckiest Girl.I grew up on Beverly Cleary, and I love the Ramona books. I had no idea that Cleary wrote young adult fiction as well, and I was impressed by this one. Shelley Latham lives a great life in Portland, Oregon. She has loving parents, great friends, and a nice boyfriend. But she's inexplicably bored with her perfect life, and when she gets the opportunity to live in California for a school year, she jumps at the chance. She makes friends and gets along well with the family friends she's staying with and even ends up dating the boy of her dreams: the school's basketball star, Philip. Along the way, she learns a lot about family, friends, dreams, expectations, and herself.It sounds terribly cliché, but, somehow, it isn't. Cleary's tale of a young girl's first taste of freedom and independence is sweet and honest. Despite the fact that there's no tragedy in the storyline, it still feels real, and that's mostly a credit to Cleary's depiction of Shelley. She's a nice girl, but she has flaws, and one of them is a flaw common to many young girls: she just doesn't know herself, yet. And that's why Cleary's story rings true. Shelley's reactions are honest. She worries about whether or not an impulsive decision was a mistake. She exults over the smallest hint that the boy she likes might like her back. She's frustrated because she sometimes doesn't understand her parents, and seeing another mother and daughter dynamic helps her to understand her own relationship with her mother.It's all very innocent, but, then again, the book is set in a much simpler time (it was originally published in 1958. While it wasn't the usual "high school = misery" story that I usually gravitate towards (mostly because I identify with them more), I still thoroughly enjoyed The Luckiest Girl. It's a sweet look at a young girl's coming of age, and it made me wistful without feeling manipulated. Beverly Cleary should get more credit than she does.
—Jelinas

This is an awful book! I find it to be quite a wast of time. That is because nothing happens throughout the entire book. I was lead to believe that this book was written so as to relate to teenage girls and I as a teenage girl formed no bond with this book. Shelly the main character went out with three boys throughout the book, and kissed not even one of them! Don't read this book!
—Julzzz

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