Scarlett Epstein Hates it Here

Scarlett Epstein Hates it Here

Author: Anna Breslaw

Genre: YA

Grade: B+

Scarlett Epstein is a young girl who cultivates outsider status at her school. She’s obsessed with a newly cancelled television show so in order to keep the fan fiction friends she meet on-line she starts writing about the students and people in her life in not the most flattering ways.

This book is pretty funny. Scarlett is smart and in a lot of ways relatable. It moves fast. I like the fact that it deals not just with your typical romance but also divorce, death, friendship, jealousy and the idea basically that Scarlett doesn’t really live her life because she’s so busy living it in her head.

There was so much of Scarlett’s story that I related to but at the same time I never felt connected or emotionally involved in it. And I really should have. She’s definitely not that easy to like (which is scary). I didn’t mind the romance so much because I thought Breslaw does such a good job of painting Gideon as human. Yeah, he’s not perfect. But he’s like so many teenage boys that don’t have super powers or world saving abilities. I actually kind of liked that about him.

And as funny as it is there were a couple of eye-rolling parts (to me) where Scarlett was trying way to hard. (Like a whole bit about Jennifer Lawrence’s public persona. No kidding Scarlett!) Sometimes I wanted to be like, “Everyone knows you’re smart Scarlett. Calm down.”

I actually really enjoyed the fan fiction story parts that we got (wish there was more) and I liked the subplot with Ashley, Scarlett’s mortal enemy for several years. There could have been more of both those things in depth and I would have been happy.

In fact even though I didn’t really connect with the main character I really appreciated Breslaw’s characters very human, very recognizable lives and she’s definitely an author I would pick up again.

Recommend: Yes. The only thing I would add to the above is there’s some fairly lenient teen drinking/pot smoking (with adults in some cases) if that’s something that may bother you.