Surviving High School

by Lele Pons and Melissa de la Cruz

[Leah]

DNFed at 20%.

Oh God. This book is actually horrific. It's been a while since a book offended me as much as this (look at whatever is on my DNF shelf). I genuinely thought this was going to be a cute, fun, quick, summer read. I mostly wanted to read it because of Melissa de la Cruz, because I've never actually heard of Lele Pons (and I REALLY hope Surviving High School IS just a fictionalised memoir, because Lele does not come across well).

The fictional Lele is one of the most big-headed, weird people I've ever met. She talks in nothing but pop culture (it's like the Breakfast Club/I'm so "pwning" this day/any kind of twenty-first century pop culture you can think of is thrown in, including The Weeknd's Can't Feel My Face (and she loves it)). If you did a shot for every pop culture reference you'd be drunk SUPER QUICK. I only read a fifth of the book and the pop culture was everywhere.

Lele just does not come across well. I stopped reading when she started going on about how Alexei (who she's known for about three days) hadn't asked her out, because she was "pretty but not pretty enough". I legitimately hate girls who say stuff like that. It's my biggest pet peeve, because all you need to do is google Lele to know she's absolutely gorgeous, and maybe you'll come back and say to me that she didn't always look like that, but I doubt in her first year of high school she was a hag. Braces do not suddenly make you ugly, OK? For me that was my breaking point. I was just like, "Nope I can't do this."

The voice was just all over the place. The need to input so much pop culture - which means that this book will age super fast. The fact that Lele is just wow so full of herself, then in the next breath she's not "pretty enough" is enough to give you whiplash. It was just so inconsistent. Her parents were super chill, super cool, hip and happening, etc, but then she was like screaming at them about a party? And she had a bad day and just started literally screaming in school. WHO DOES THAT? This was just so bad. I have no idea what input Melissa de la Cruz had because she's a far superior writer to the tiny bit I read here. It was like a five year old's stream of conscious was just let loose, with no filter.

Just nope.