Virgin

by Radhika Sanghani

I don't need the perfect guy.

I don't need candlelight or roses.

Honestly, I don't even need a real bed...

Ellie Kolstakis is a twenty-one-year-old virgin.

She's not religious. She's not waiting for marriage. She's not even holding on for The One.

Ellie's just unlucky.

But with her final year of university coming to an end, she's determined to shed her V-plates, once and for all.

And she's ready to try anything - from submitting to her domineering Greek mother's matchmaking skills to embracing the world of nether-waxing trends (no-one wants a 'Hitler') and even YouTube tutorials on how to give a 'blow gift' (it should never be a job).

After all, what has she got to lose? Well, besides the obvious.

Praise for VIRGIN

'Laugh out loud...Bridget Jones could take a page from this novel' - Joan Rivers

'An entertaining romp'- Emma Barnett, broadcaster and women's editor of The Telegraph

'Bridget Jones and Carrie Bradshaw, meet your wisecracking, vagina obsessed match. Sanghani's debut is a hilarious, irreverent look at smart-alecky, painfully self-conscious, 21-year-old Ellie's relentless mission to rectify a disastrous first attempt at performing oral sex, get deflowered, find the perfect Brazilian wax, avoid her tradition-bound Greek mother's nagging, graduate summa cum laude, be a writer, and fit in...This story for millennials is a wonderful blend of modern agnst with old-fashioned sweetness." -Publisher's Weekly

• ISBN10: 0606356770
• ISBN13: 9780606356770
• Publish Date: 5 August 2014
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 6 April 2021
• Imprint: Turtleback Books
• Edition: Bound for Schools & Libraries ed.
• Format: Hardcover (Library Binding)
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[anastasia]

At first I wasn’t sure what to make of this book. Virgin was really was something special. I’m just blown away. Sanghani is definitely on my radar now.

Virgin is great. Well written, funny, and very relevant to our time. Even thought the protagonist is a virgin she is frank about her body, and sex. Ellie is a twenty-one year old virgin who shares her story of attempts to have her deflowered with the aid of her partner-in-crime friend Lara.Ellie embarks on several adventures with the opposite sex to speed up the process of becoming a non-virgin to no avail. Ellie learns the proper rules of kissing, foreplay, and describes in length different ways she masturbates to recognize an orgasm when the big day happens.
Overall, I really enjoyed this novel, and hope to read more from this author. I highly recommend this novel!

Full review is on my Blog

[Cocktails and Books]

I thought the synopsis sounded interesting and I’ve heard the book is funny so I decided to see what all the hype was about. The book started out humorous and I loved the little anecdotes the main character, Ellie thought and occasionally blurted out embarrassingly. However, as the story progressed, my humor faded at Ellie’s obsession to lose her virginity. She looked at it as a something unusual and tragic instead of something beautiful and priceless.

The story starts out with Ellie at the doctor’s office. She notices on a computer screen of her medical records a word in all caps: VIRGIN. This is very disheartening for Ellie because she doesn’t want her doctor, or anyone else, to know she’s a virgin. She shames herself for it, lies to her friends about it and decides to vlog about it. Ellie also decides she needs to lose it fast to anything male that breathes.

Long story short, Ellie does meet a guy and she does lose her “V-plates” to him. She thinks she’s falling for him and that he is falling for her, but in reality, he is falling for someone else and she is kicked to the friend zone, permanently. Only then does she think about the consequences of her actions of having sex with someone she doesn’t know that well and decides to visit her doctor again.

Ellie is adamant that her doctor change her medical records status from VIRGIN to SEXUALLY ACTIVE or something equally blatant. She is tested for HIV and STDs and finds out she does have chlamydia. Of course, her world is over but then her friend says that chlamydia is basically no big deal and “everybody has it,” and it’s fine. And then the story is summed up by the last sentence before Ellie’s final vlog entry:

“After twenty-one years of surviving virginity, chlamydia didn’t really seem like a big deal.”

Really? It’s no big deal to have contracted an STD? Ellie talks like she has cancer or something but it’s not cancer, it’s her virginity. I must be missing something here. Are today’s youth so engrossed in becoming sexually active that it’s considered “cancerous” if they aren’t? I understand this is a fictitious story, but I feel that maybe this type of content should be reserved for an autobiographical book or another forum.

Fiction books are for entertainment purposes and I was not entertained. I was thoroughly disgusted with the content of the book and the lackadaisical views of meaningless sex and the lack of the importance of education regarding sex, birth control and STDs.

I applaud the author’s efforts for braving the publishing waters but I am not a fan. This book might be entertaining for the 19 to 25-year-old crowd but I found the story completely deplorable and would not recommend it to anyone.

Reviewed by Elizabeth for Cocktails and Books

[Leah]

When I heard about Radhika Sanghani's debut novel Virgin, it promised a shocking read, a Judy Blume-esque novel that provided a proper look into sex and losing virginity... And I was really looking forward to reading it - I like novels that are unique, that don't shy away from difficult or taboo topics, I was very happy to receive a copy to review, but I actually ended up being quite disappointed with the novel.

Virgin is a very honest look at virginity and the pressure to lose your v-card and that's all good stuff, but it was just so bloody awkward. Ellie is one of the most naive, self-obsessed 21 year old I've ever met! It's all her,  her, her and if anyone ever bothers to tell her the truth, she doesn't speak to them for ages (as she does with her BFF Lara - if you were really BFFs, you'd never go weeks without speaking, FYI, you'd pick up the darn phone probably the next day!!). It was like the novel didn't know what it wanted to be - Ellie's quest to lose her v-card, or a mission for girls to not worry about all things sex-related, as Ellie and her friend Emma start a vlog clearly unaware that term means video blogger...

I really, really struggled to like Ellie. She was a bit too cray-cray for me. Too immature. She just needed to relax, to stop stressing so much - if all you've got to worry about in the world is your virginity, then your life isn't too bloody awful. Ya know? I appreciated the fact Ellie's friend Lara wasn't willing to sugar coat Ellie's predicament, even if it meant she disappeared for most of the novel as Ellie threw a strop. I did, however, like Emma - she was such an awesome addition to the novel, and I liked her laissez faire attitude to life, and sex.

Virgin straddles the genres, and again I think this is it's problem - it can't decide if it's YA or Chick Lit, and I just wanted more from the blog aspect - it was a great idea, and I wished Sanghani had focused more on that than Ellie's v-card. For a proper novel about losing your v-card you ought to check out Losing It by Cora Carmack. As much as I appreciated the honesty of Virgin, part of me thinks that the whole reason there aren't more books about people's body hair, is because people don't want to read about all that stuff, and I just felt so awkward whenever Ellie was being far too honest about everything. I just wanted to cover my eyes and run away. Certainly an interesting idea, but it just didn't work for me.This review was originally posted on Girls Love To Read