For the most part, this was a somewhat light-hearted look at one girl's coming of age. It was filled with some interesting characters - some quirky and some frustrating, some just plain cute - and a couple of intriguing subplots that I would have liked to have read more about. But for every good point, there was something frustrating about it.
First, I really liked Cricket. She was a good girl and a wonderful friend, but she kind of let her best friend walk all over her without much of a fight. That was frustrating. She was so devoted to this friend, who clearly didn't feel the same way about her. But as much as this was frustrating, it was also endearing. Another thing about Cricket that was frustrating was the fact that she worried too much what other people thought of her and it took the whole book for her to realize only her opinion of herself counted. But at least she realized it.
Then there's Jules, the so-called friend. What really irked me about her was the sudden transformation. In the beginning, she seems just as devoted to the friendship as Cricket, but then something happens and - bam, she's a whole new person. A person who ditches her best friend, spills secrets about her to the source of them, and just generally does everything a mean girl would do to someone who was supposedly important to her. I never bought into this whole transformation; it just seemed kind of forced to me for story purposes, but it fell kind of flat.
To complicate matters, Cricket gets involved with someone she keeps thinking she shouldn't be involved with. Again, I didn't buy into the reasoning. I won't give away the why, but I will say it wasn't as compelling a reason as, say, if the guy was a bad boy who had the potential of bringing her down. He wasn't.
But, despite a few frustrations, this was a pretty good book. A quick, light-hearted read.
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