Kiss & Blog

Title: Kiss & Blog
Author: Alyson Noel
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Year Published: 2007
Pages: 227
Price: USD 11.83 (Book Depository)

Winter and Sloane are best friends since their childhood. And both are obsessed to be popular, especially Sloane. In their sophomore year in high school, the opportunity finally comes when Sloane is in the same class with the It Girl Trio, Jaci, Claire and Holly. Sloane quickly becomes the forth member of the clique and Winter feels that soon she will be the fifth. But what happens next is Sloane betraying her by stealing Winter's cheers for cheerleading selection and dump her.

Shocked, Winter then fly to New York to her father and find an inspiration to make a blog about Sloane. She comes back home and starts her blog with pseudonym: Eleanor Rigby. In every post, Eleanor Rigby posts some secrets about Princess Pink a.k.a. Sloane. It doesn't take a long time for the blog to become famous and even there is a publisher who is interested to make Eleanor Rigby's blog into book. But is it appropriate to be famous because of spoiling your friend's terrible secret? Does Winter really want the world to see Sloane's downfall?

What will happen next to Winter and her blog?

This is the first Alyson Noel's book that I've read. Most of her books that I had known and had seen were the paranormal YA and, to be honest, I'm not that interested to read them (because they are series). But then I found this book. Contemporary YA. And after I read the blurb, I quickly decided to give it a try because it reminds me so much of those teenage movies of the 90s and early 20s. However, I really didn't have high expectation when I started to read this because I thought, "hey, this is a book written by an author who mostly writes fantasy. I can't expect her to be like Sarah Dessen or what." But turned out that I quite enjoyed her writing.

Reading this book reminds me so much of those teenage movies and series of 90's and early 2000's (as I've said earlier). Wish Upon a Star, Mean Girls, and also the series Popular (if you are as old as I am, maybe you'll remember. Hee...). And yes, what I meant here is that actually, the storyline is quite typical and predictable. However, this kind of theme seems like never boring to me. It's such a light read, entertaining, and bring the old memories back.

Winter is a typical teenager who is still looking for who she truly is. When Sloane took the dominant side of their friendship, Winter thought that all that Sloane wanted was also what she wanted. So, when Sloane told her that she wanted to be popular, she easily supported the idea. But deep down inside, Winter also didn't feel comfortable hanging out with the popular crowd. When Sloane finally succeeded to reach her goal and ditched Winter, Winter was so heartbroken and also clueless because all she knew before was only being with Sloane and that's when the revenge started.

Actually this book has a good message especially for teens where being popular at school seems like a very important issue and this book delivered its message in an easy and right way. There are also some romance scenes that are kinda sweet. But, in my opinion, I wish that the storyline can be more complicated and the ending was not as simple as that. It was wayyyy to predictable. For a younger teenagers, maybe this book will be a nice read. But I don't know for the older ones. However, I still find Alyson Noel's writing as quite entertaining and enjoyable. In fact, I already bought her other Contemporary YA book, Faking 19 and I can't wait to read it.

Recommended for teenagers.