Rebel with a Cupcake

Have you ever heard the phrase “everything but the kitchen sink”?  That’s how I feel about this YA novel by Anna Mainwaring. Body issues?  Bullying?  Romantic love triangle?  Quirky family dynamics?  School stress?  Internet fandom?  It’s got a little bit of everything…and that is this novel’s downfall.

First, let’s talk about the characters.  The narrator of the story is Jezebel (Jess), a high schooler in England who is confident in her pudginess…until she’s not.  After a wardrobe malfunction and then standing up the school bully, Jess becomes a YouTube sensation, but this leads to spiraling doubt in her body and what she can do to change it.  I’m okay with people trying to work out to be more in shape, but Jess’s reasons are purely for a boy’s attention (which is always a bad call).  By the end, she does come to the realization that feeling confident in your body is the most beautiful, but it’s a long road of bad thinking to get there.  

Then you throw in all the side characters, which often get confused.  There’s her two best friends that try to guide her through her struggles, but there are also other satellite friends from school that get mentioned frequently (but not frequently enough for them to matter).  We have Zara, the school fashionista bully, and her gaggle of friends.  There’s Jess’s two guy friends who show up at the beginning and end of the story (but seemingly disappear in the middle).  There are Jess’s two love interests.  Then throw in her weirdly dysfunctional family—the little sister with the imaginary friend who bullies her, the weed smoking grandmother who lives in the attic, the former-fashion model mother, the rockstar father, the older sister with an eating disorder—and you have a motley crew of characters.  Honestly, there are just too many side stories to keep track of, too many character quirks to process, just too much of everything.

Finally, the plot. Again, the main adjective I can use to describe it is “bloated.”  There’s too many side dramas—like Jess’s internet fame or her rockstar father’s reunion concert or hating her sister’s possessive boyfriend—and you find yourself wondering when it will end.  I don’t mind a few plot twists here and there, but a few changes at the end of the novel seem like they are only there because someone said, “Wait, this is all tying up too nicely…let’s throw in a misdirection just for the heck of it!” 

This one might just be one to skip…unless you’re really in the mood for a predictable, overly dramatized story.

*This title was given to me by Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.