Ten Things We Did (and probably shouldn't have) by Sarah Mlynowski

TITLE: Ten Things We Did (and probably shouldn't have)
AUTHOR: Sarah Mlynowski
PUBLISHER/YEAR: Harper Teen/2011
SOURCE: Purchased. There's a bookstore down the street from me. It's an addiction. 

Goodreads / Author's Website

How many of you out there would have jumped at the chance to live parent free with your friends while you were in high school? And can you imagine all the trouble you could find yourself in? That's pretty much what Ten 
Things We Did is about. April is 16 and over Christmas break her dad and stepmother spring the news that they're moving states... in like a week. April convinces her dad that she can stay with best friend Vi (conveniently forgetting that Vi's mom is out of town more often than not) and starts the new semester living out the high school fantasy. Boys. Parties. Hot tubs. 

I'm feeling pretty mediocre about Ten Things right now. On the one hand fun, light, escapist story, on the other it just didn't leave me with any strong feelings. I'm not going to be shoving this one into my friends hands any time soon. Like there's just not a lot about it that I want to discuss. Kind of a problem when I'm writing a review. 

For one thing, I had a few problems getting past the fact that April's dad let her move in with Vi,  never having met her mother. He's supposed to be a pretty strict parent; enforces a 10 PM curfew even on weeknights, caring, follows up on grades. All that jazz. But he pretty much blindly allows April to move out on her own. 

My second issue was with April and Vi. They just make bad decision after bad decision. They just weren't as mature as I expected sixteen year olds to be? Vi, yes, I got a pretty good sense of her. She has some issues, pretty much abandoned by her mother, I got it. I felt for her. It made sense. But April? Yes, her parents got divorced and she was angry, but her parents clearly cared about her. By the end, I sort of got what she was going through, but for so much of the novel I just wanted to shake her.

Some of the things that went down were  pretty entertaining. Like buying a hot tub, I was covering eyes and shaking my head. Such a poor choice. But at the same time, that's one of those things that I was like yeah, somebody would do that. Fiscal responsibility is a skill a lot of people haven't learned at that age... or you know, older. The teen sex and drinking. Also pretty realistic. It's not graphic and I don't think it really glorifies it. There are consequences and again, lots of poor choices. But that's sort of the fun of the novel. It's in these exaggerated scenarios. 

This is a fun kind of beach read. It's not a curl up on the couch and devour it kind of book for me, but it's fun. It's light, you can read it pretty quickly and while I didn't fall in love with the characters they're a good way to pass a few hours. So maybe pick it up in the summer when you just want to laze about on the sand one day?