"Some girls glide through life, but unfortunately Lu Perez is not one of them. I thrash and flail and flounder."
Luisa Perez, the main character of Paper Cuts, is well-developed. She doesn't have school spirit, nor does she take part in extracurricular activities until she is assigned to cover her high school's fundraiser as an anonymous columnist. She has a great voice and I love her humour, her spunky retorts, her sarcasm and her outlook on life.
Luisa's family is made up of unique characters with stereotypical mannerisms. Grace, Luisa's sister, is a high school dropout, a mother and a badass and she and Luisa have a complex love-hate relationship. Paz is Grace's boyfriend who's tough on the outside, but soft on the inside and his overprotectiveness towards Luisa and their banter is hilarious. I also like the Paz and Grace side-plot.
The characters at Luisa's school are what one would expect from a stereotypical American high school. There's a lot of girl-on-girl hate and slut-shaming and Luisa does have a tendency to think that she's better than everyone else, but weirdly enough, it seems like Luisa admires Mariah, the mean girl, to some extent. I love Luisa's friends Rachel and Izzy. They are awesome and supportive and they have distinct personalities.
As Luisa attends more school events and puts herself out there, a bunch of guys enter her life and Luisa wonders whether they could be her male counterpart columnist, Scoop. The romance in Paper Cuts is quite cute and I wanted things to end well for Luisa and Joey.
Paper Cuts has two of many of my reading bait words, journalism and battle of the sexes. While the plot is a little unrealistic, I like the back-and-forth between Newshound (Luisa's pseudonym) and Scoop. They have opposing views and they trade retorts, barbs and insults. This is my third read of Paper Cuts and knowing Scoop's identity made the column articles more fun to read. When Luisa and Joey start going out together, they're insulting each other and themselves without realising it.. However, it's difficult to believe that a school newspaper would publish column articles with so many innuendos.
Paper Cuts is full of cliches, and stereotypes, but it still has heartfelt and laugh-out-loud moments and it ended up putting me in a feel-good mood.