Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)That sentence is on the cover of the book. I cannot think of any better way to describe the plot of this absorbing story. The main character is a 15-yearl-old girl named Roberta. Roberta is frequently mistaken for a boy because she hasn't quite gotten out of puberty yet, her father is an ego-centric looser whose idea of parenting consists entirely of leaving a bag of rental videos by the door and frozen dinners in the freezer, and her only "friends" are the people who work in her family's arcade in a run-down mall on the not-so-nice side of town. The only person who seems to take an active interest in Roberta's life is Mrs. Weiss, the elderly owner of the greeting card shop across from the arcade. Mrs. Weiss is the only person who cares enough to ask if Roberta had breakfast or if she has seen her father for more than five minutes in the past couple of days. Mrs. Weiss also does her best to teach Roberta the one lesson she feels will help her the most as she tries to play the hand she has been dealt: No matter how bad life gets, you have got to survive. Never just lay down and die.
Some parts of this book are very dark and very few are extremely light-hearted, yet the overall message is an encouraging one. It's not the Disney kind of encouraging, where if you only believe long enough then all of your dreams will come true. It's the Real Life kind of encouraging. If you keep trying to succeed, life will be better than if you give up. Roberta doesn't get to live Happily Ever After, but she has hope that she will live Happily Enough.
This is possibly one of the most well-written books for young adults that I have found in a very long time. I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys the more introspective styles of storytelling.
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