Plus One (Sarah L. Young)

[el_staplador]

This one was sold to me as 'bi teen girl gets pregnant when she and her girlfriend split up, but only has her ex-girlfriend to turn to when she gets thrown out of her home'. Which immediately appealed to me in a nostalgic, school library, kind of a way. (If only Section 28 hadn't been in force at the time. There were plenty of books about teen pregnancy in the school library, but none of them involved anybody being anything other than straight.)

And that was a pretty good summary. The problem was, there wasn't much more to the book than that. Lexi is pregnant. Emily tells her that it's going to ruin her life. Lexi's mother throws her out. Emily takes her in. A deus ex machina in the form of the principled Christian father of a friend solves the money problem. There was very little in terms of character development, and such as there was felt forced. (For example, I really wasn't convinced by the eventual resolution of the relationship storyline, and wasn't reassured that any of the problems that had led to the initial break-up had been solved.)

There was a lot of infodumping about abortion options, and, later, what Lexi could expect in terms of physical symptoms of pregnancy, which was all very laudable, but rather reminded me of the way that The Archers began as a way to distribute news of agricultural developments to farmers. And the prose was very clumsy. Too much showing, not telling, about action, and too much telling, not showing, about emotions and relationships. Although this may just be a YA thing: this is the second one in a row where I've really not been convinced by any of the characters and have found the prose dull. I can't help feeling that our young adults deserve better...

Comments

[workday_dreamer]

That's a shame. This book caught my eye as well and it's too bad it's not as good as I hoped it would be.

[isis]

Huh, this is a different Plus One than the book with the same title I read, by Elizabeth Fama. (Which is a pretty good SF book, though the only f/f content was in my imagination as there's an enemies-to-friends thing going on that my femslash goggles wanted to make more!)