Virgin

by Radhika Sanghani

[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