Community Reviews
Hmm. This wasn't really what I was expecting. I mean, I knew it was about sex, but I had no idea it went into so much detail. Go Judy Blume. I can see now why it was so ground breaking in the 1970s. I kind of figured I'd read it in my early teens (in the late 80s and early 90s), but I think it's safe to say surely I'd remember it if I did. Judy holds nothing back, and while it's definitely dated in so many ways--and super cringey--I had to stop and put myself back into a teen state of mind. Things really did progress more quickly as a teen and guys were relentless about pressuring girls to have sex. I can only hope things have changed for the better. Definitely the most cringey thing about this book--Michael calling his penis Ralph. Yikes.
#popsugarreadingchallenge23 (prompt #13 - A book published the year you were born)
#popsugarreadingchallenge23 (prompt #13 - A book published the year you were born)
I understand why this book was important. I just didn't enjoy it very much.
This book was written in the mid-70s and it's mostly about the sex life of two teenagers. It is not erotic, it's humdrum. No, I'll clarify: it's humdrum today. In the 1970s, I can imagine this book would have been entirely different than whatever else was out there. As far as I can tell, nobody was writing books about normal teenagers having normal sex and then normal breakups and being normal people about it. It was all disaster and scandal and death and sadness and ruination. So I can see how normalizing this was important.
To be fair, too, another reason it was humdrum was the narrative style. The narrator, Katherine, was very straight-forward. There were a lot of this-then-that details about how a scene progressed and I often found myself wondering what was truly necessary in a paragraph.
Overall: important for the time, worth reading for people like me (teachers and YA fans), not really recommendable. I can think of many other books that deal with sex more appropriately for today's modern audience.
Oh, and one last note: the main male character named his penis. Ralph. Now I'm going to go ralph because ew. I so didn't need that in my life.
This book was written in the mid-70s and it's mostly about the sex life of two teenagers. It is not erotic, it's humdrum. No, I'll clarify: it's humdrum today. In the 1970s, I can imagine this book would have been entirely different than whatever else was out there. As far as I can tell, nobody was writing books about normal teenagers having normal sex and then normal breakups and being normal people about it. It was all disaster and scandal and death and sadness and ruination. So I can see how normalizing this was important.
To be fair, too, another reason it was humdrum was the narrative style. The narrator, Katherine, was very straight-forward. There were a lot of this-then-that details about how a scene progressed and I often found myself wondering what was truly necessary in a paragraph.
Overall: important for the time, worth reading for people like me (teachers and YA fans), not really recommendable. I can think of many other books that deal with sex more appropriately for today's modern audience.
Oh, and one last note: the main male character named his penis. Ralph. Now I'm going to go ralph because ew. I so didn't need that in my life.
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