Early Review: Confessions of an Angry Girl by Louise Rozett

Format – e-ARC from Netgalley

Publisher- Harlequin Teen

Pages- 304

Publication Date- August 28, 2012

Pre-Order this Book- Amazon

From Goodreads:

Rose Zarelli, self-proclaimed word geek and angry girl, has some CONFESSIONS to make... #1: I'm livid all the time. Why? My dad died. My mom barely talks. My brother abandoned us. I think I'm allowed to be irate, don't you?

#2: I make people furious regularly. Want an example? I kissed Jamie Forta, a badass guy who "might" be dating a cheerleader. She is now enraged and out for blood. Mine.

#3: High school might as well be Mars. My best friend has been replaced by an alien, and I see red all the time. (Mars is red and "seeing red" means being angry-get it?)

Here are some other vocab words that describe my life: Inadequate. Insufferable. Intolerable.

(Don't know what they mean? Look them up yourself.) (Sorry. That was rude.)

Review:

Rose is a fourteen year old freshman who is still grieving over the death of her father, her dad was offered a job as a contractor with a huge salary for a short time in Iraq and since he had lost his job as an aircraft engineer he took it.   He only lasted four months in Iraq before he was killed by a roadside bomb.     

It seems like everything is going wrong for Rose.  Her dad just died, her brother moved away for college, her mother hardly comes out of her office, and her best friend ditches her for her new cheerleader friends.  Rose is ticked off at the world, and I honestly can’t blame her.  I felt so bad for Rose, I just wanted to hug her and tell her everything would be ok.

On homecoming night when Rose’s crush Jamie Forta, a hot junior who used to play hockey with her brother kisses her; she thinks everything might start getting better, the last thing she expects is for everything to get worse.  She’s at an after party at a sleazy hotel when her friend drinks too much and passes out in the bathroom and she doesn’t appear to be breathing, Rose does the right thing and calls 911.  But of course with this being high school nobody cares that she saved her friend, the only thing they care about is that the party stopped when the cops showed up, which leads to harassment at school. 

Rose is a strong character, she’s loyal to her friends and she deals with the harassment at school courageously.  I also liked Jamie but I felt like he was kind of hot and cold through most of this book.  He kisses her but then he doesn’t talk to her again for months.  I really wish that we could have seen more interaction between him and Rose, and hopefully we will in the next book, Confessions of an Almost Girlfriend which comes out in 2013.

Confessions of an Angry Girl is not just about on girl being angry at the world, it’s much deeper than that.  This book is also about loss and grieving and learning how to move on with life, even if you don’t want to.  This book was wonderful and touching and I look forward to the next one.

Thanks to Harlequin Teen and Netgalley for providing me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Quotes:

“I’ve already been mean enough for one day, and it’s only seven-fifteen”

“As I bend down to lace up, I realize I’m Angry today, with a capital A-I can feel it.”

Rating: