Yao Sd Sd من عند Gamelotal, فنزويلا
Yes, that's right! This is the book that's not officially supposed to exist! So how surprised was I, how lucky did I feel, when I found it at my super-secret source?! What's the verdict?? It's cute. Opal Mehta is an academic overachiever in New Jersey, whose Indian parents have spent their entire life planning (with acronyms and flow charts) how, exactly, she's going to be admitted to Harvard. She's done it all perfectly. So imagine her surprise when she shows up in Cambridge for her early-decision interview and the dean asks, "What do you do for fun? Tell me about your best friend." She feels like a failure when she doesn't have an answer. So her parents embark on a quest to turn her into the stereotypical teenager, first by finding out exactly what that is (think OC marathons and a trendy haircut), and then by forcing her to be it. So she runs around in spiky heels and eventually befriends the popular clique, however tremulously. Of course there's a huge tragedy (you can see most of the plot devices coming from a mile away). Still, Opal is sympathetic, I enjoyed the denouement, and even though the moral of the story really is that Harvard is the perfect place, it's not for the reasons you'd strictly expect. Really, after reading it, I feel bad for the poor girl (Kaavya, not Opal). I really don't think she needed to have her publishing contract taken away from her, and all that other stuff. I do have to wonder, though, how much of the novel is autobiographical -- since it's about a Harvard-bound Indian girl from New Jersey with overbearing parents, written by a Harvard-bound Indian girl from New Jersey with... well, we can only speculate. It's also incredibly of its time: there are soooooooo many pop culture references that are so specific, that reading it even two years from now would make it seem dated. Suddenly I couldn't decide whether Priscilla would be more impressed with the OPI polish color Don't Be Koi with Me or the Benefit lip gloss Raisin Hell. In the end, the only thing I managed to squeak out was "Hi." Priscilla and Jennifer executed identical slow-motion turns that sent two seats of straight shiny hair (one black, one blond) flying up, only to land again on their shoulders, not one strand out of place. How did they do that? I knew that if I tried, I would probably give myself whiplash. I bet that while I'd been going to SAT prep courses, the HBz ["Haute Bitchez", what the girls call themselves] had taken a class that taught them the art of the magical hair flip.