Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters

by Meredith Zeitlin

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

Freshman Year and Other Unnatural Disasters is obviously striving to be a cute and quirky book, and it might be—for the right audience. Zeitlin attempts to give Kelsey an authentic teenage voice by giving her sassy dialogue, but I personally found her narration a little shallow and annoying instead of fun and witty. Also, the crazy situations she gets into are at times bizarre instead of funny.

The book presents itself as a cross between a realistic representation of the freshman experience and the worst case scenario. Kelsey’s worries and struggles are meant to be common to her readers while the things that go wrong in her life are exaggerated both for comic effect and to put readers’ lives in perspective. However, Kelsey’s “common experiences” will not speak to everyone—and much of my issues with the story are because they did not speak to me.

Kelsey’s major concerns are clothes, boys, and being cool. Most teenagers do think about these things at least occasionally, but it would have been nice to see Kelsey take an interest in something more serious. Although it is her freshman year of high school, she barely mentions academics unless to complain learning is boring or say she ran out of time to do her homework because she was having a life crisis. She seems passionate about soccer but often focuses more on showing up other players or showing off to boys than on her love of the sport.

In their free time, Kelsey and her friends frequently drink, party, and hook up (which seems here to mean making out and not sex). If they were older, perhaps juniors or seniors in high school, this would seem a little less crazy. It would even make sense if they had just gotten caught up in the culture of certain high school cliques. However, they appear to be continuing behavior begun in middle school, and I found it even more difficult to relate to this. I certainly was not thinking of getting to “second base” while in seventh or eighth grade.

The story does have several cute things going for it, including the long-distance relationship Kelsey’s friend Em is in and a mysterious school newspaper boy who may or may not be flirting with Kelsey. A lot of things also are fun, including an insane school production of Fiddler on the Roof. However, my failure to relate to or even like Kelsey was a huge drawback, as this is clearly a book where a relationship with the protagonist matters. My issues with it are mostly personal. Yet readers who do relate to Kelsey will probably think this a fun read with a sassy, confident lead girl.