Ordinary Girls

by Blair Thornburgh

*A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2019*

*A Booklist Editors' Choice for Books for Youth 2019*

Perfect for fans of Sarah Mlynowski and Jenny Han, this heartfelt and humorous contemporary take on Sense and Sensibility follows two sisters—complete opposites—who discover the secrets they’ve been keeping make them more alike than they’d realized.  

For siblings as different as Plum and Ginny, getting on each other’s nerves is par for the course. But when the family’s finances hit a snag, sending chaos through the house in a way only characters from a Jane Austen novel could understand, a distance grows between them like never before.

Plum, a self-described social outcast, finally has something in her life that doesn’t revolve around her dramatic older sister. But what if coming into her own means Plum isn’t there for Ginny when she, struggling with a hard secret of her own, needs her most?

• ISBN10: 0062447815
• ISBN13: 9780062447814
• Publish Date: 11 July 2019 (first published 4 June 2019)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 22 August 2023
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: HarperTeen
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[Sam@WLABB]

From the opening, where Plum lamented how she had never been good at beginnings, I found myself totally engrossed with her storytelling and this tale. There was something about Plum's voice, that made me want to get to know her better, and I could not the resist the charm and allure of her quirky world.

This was a tale of two sisters - one very dramatic, the other quite pragmatic. They had their ups and downs with each other, but their relationship was the heart and soul of the story for me.

I adore the exploration of the sibling bond, and this one was indeed, very special. Plum had always felt overshadowed by her sister. She thought Ginny was more attractive, popular, intelligent, and likable, and she was often tired of being compared to her sister. However, via flashbacks and tender and humorous interactions between the two in the present, I got to bask in the beauty of their sisterly love. I had so much fun at their movie nights, and greatly enjoyed their shared love of Romantic period literature. Yes, literary references abound in this novel, and they were so well placed, never failing to delight me.

During the time of this story, the family was under more stress than usual. The house was falling apart, cash flow was becoming an issue, and Ginny was often in a state of hysteria involving her college plans. Plum found an escape from the chaos via the oddest source - Tate Kurokawa, one of the "loud sophomore boys" she usually tried to avoid. Their odd friendship was one of the most precious parts of the book for me. I wore a stupid grin on my face almost every single time they shared the page, and could not get enough of their sweet and awkward encounters.

One of the biggest things plaguing this family was their grief. They had lost their father a decade ago, but still hadn't really come to terms with that loss. This pain of it ran deep and it festered within the family, finally coming to a fever pitch at one point during the book. It was quite a profound moment, and I found it very moving.

Ordinary Girls was a delightful tale filled with interesting family dynamics, sisterly affection, first love, and two young women finding their own sense of self. It was charming, witty, amusing, heartwarming, heartbreaking, and throughly entertaining.

*ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

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