Sweet and surprisingly realistic. ( )

Not the best first act -- it takes a long time to get to the primary conflict of the novel. The main character spends her time snogging, smoking, and drinking in the park after school. They gossip about who likes who, who kissed who, but it's all among her incestuous group of friends. So her difficulty is no surprise. The other main character is just blah. It's not a super-serious book, and yet it misses any plot twists or character-changing events. It all seems to be one middling line, not very up-and-down.

I guess I'm disappointed because it's not the novel I thought it would be. I'm not saying I wanted "16 and Pregnant", but it reminds me too much of The Casual Vacancy. Maybe this is the way English novels are written, in a soap opera-y style where no one is very likable.

It's also very British. I wished I had gotten it as an eBook so I could look up some of the terms and slang being used. I'd probably still bring it to a desert island with me, but it'd be at the bottom of the pile. ( )

The way that friendship is explored in this book is quiet but ultimately very touching. I liked that the characters in this book felt very real. Although the book has at the center of its conflict a teen pregnancy, it really is more about how all the people around Hannah (and Hannah herself) respond to the change in circumstances. ( )