Customer Reviews

Confess-O-Rama (Laurel Leaf Books)

5 star:		(2)
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3 star:		(1)
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I cannot even say how much I enjoyed this book. Although I picked it up for my younger sister (10), at 14 I had a great time with it. While not drowning in romance, or that kind of drippy friendship that most new literature is pressing on us these days this book managed to get across the kind of relationship any teenager needs. Insightful, smart, humorous, and an easy read, this is a great book for anyone who feels like they don't belong, are being discriminated against, is an artist, or likes cooking. What an incredible book!!!

Koertge is one of America's finest writers of books foryoung people, and Confess-O-Rama keeps his string of hitsgoing. Tony's mother has a knack for marrying men who die too soon, starting with Tony's father and going right through his 3 subsequent stepfathers. Now, as Tony and his mom are recovering from the latest death and living [temporarily?] in West Paradise, CA, Tony meets an unusual group of high school artists and begins sharing his problems with a phone service called Confess-O-Rama, little suspecting that his voice and others will become source material for a performance piece.

Tony had a real father once, then had three stepfathers. All of them died, leaving Tony's mother heartbroken and feeling like she's some sort of bad luck charm. Tony has become accustomed to moving to new places, so he isn't very upset when he and his mother move to a new town to live in his aunt's place for a few months. He will do part of his high school time there, making no friends or connections, and then move onto someplace new to finish.

Things don't go the way Tony planned, though. The very first day of school, he meets a weird group of students, artists who immediately pull him into their group even when he doesn't try to be friends with them. One of them in particular, a girl named Jordan, intrigues him. She seems to be running on fast forward all of the time and she doesn't easily take no for an answer.

Tony tries to resist Jordan, but finds himself drawn to her. He is able to calm her down when she gets out of control with stress, and she helps to teach him that his mother isn't as fragile as he thinks and doesn't need him to watch over her every second. But when Tony feels like his trust has been betrayed, will they be able to remain friends?

I liked that the artist characters were all very interesting and unique; I'd actually like to have read more about them as individuals. I also liked the details of Tony's cooking, from the things he cooked to how he went about it and why he liked to cook so much.

I thought that some of the characters were over the top, though. Jordan, especially, seemed really irritating and not at all endearing as Tony seemed to think she was. I also thought that her betrayal was incredibly obvious; I knew from the start that it was going to happen and I thought it was strange that Tony didn't figure it out.