Ready or Not: An All-American Girl Novel [Hardcover]

Meg Cabot (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 26, 2005

Top ten things Samantha Madison isn't ready for:

10. Spending Thanksgiving at Camp David

9. With her boyfriend, the president's son

8. Who appears to want to take their relationship to the Next Level

7. Which Sam inadvertently and shockingly announces live on MTV

6. While appearing to support the president's dubious policies on families, morals, and yes, sex

5. Juggling her new after-school job at Potomac Video

4. Even though she already has a job as teen ambassador to the UN (that she doesn't get paid for)

3. Riding the Metro and getting accosted because she's "the redheaded girl who saved the president's life," in spite of her new, semipermanent Midnight Ebony tresses

2. Experiencing total role reversal with her popular sister Lucy, who for once can't get the guy she wants and the number-one thing Sam isn't ready for?

1. Finding out the hard way that in art class, "life drawing" means "naked people."

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 9 Up–Samantha Madison is back. She is still a semi-celebrity for saving the president's life and she is still dating his son. She is faced with a huge dilemma when it appears that she not only condemns the president's new Return to Family policy, but also implies that she has slept with David. The ensuing consequences and Samantha's conflicted feelings about sex provide drama. A subplot involves Lucy, Samantha's older sister, falling for her nerdy math tutor, who does not return her feelings. This is a surprisingly political book with a positive attitude about sex. The themes are more mature than those of The Princess Diaries series. Samantha writes frequent top-10 lists, such as Top ten things that suck about being the sister of the most popular girl in school. Teen sexuality and honesty about protection, awkwardness, and masturbation are handled in a humorous and sensitive manner. The characters are real, witty, and relatable, and the author has an ear for teen dialogue. Some more conservative areas and school libraries might give pause, but the book is funny, smart, well paced, and honest.–Amy Patrick, New York Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gr. 9-12. In this lively follow-up to All-American Girl (2002), in which 15-year-old Samantha Madison not only saved the president's life but also nabbed the First Son as her boyfriend, narrator Samantha tries to cope with various challenges, some of which are not unusual for a 16-year-old, There's an annoying Queen Bee at school and worries about whether she's ready to have sex with her boyfriend, and her trials as a national celebrity, followed and photographed at inopportune moments. Cabot has fashioned an appealing heroine, opinionated but willing to change her mind, self-centered but increasingly engaged by the rest of the world. There are no assassination attempts to thwart here, but Cabot does throw Samantha into the prickly politics--both personal and national--of premarital sex. Sense of humor intact, the teen emerges triumphant, with a stronger sense of herself and of "family values." Fans of Samantha's previous adventure will be happy to find more of her top-10 lists here, including the sobering "Top ten reasons it rules to be a teen in the United States (as opposed to elsewhere)." Abby Nolan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: HarperTeen; First Edition first Printing edition (July 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060724501
• ISBN-13: 978-0060724504
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (131 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #507,939 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I write! Books for you, your sister, your best friend, your mother . . . . even for men with good taste!

Most of my time is spent over at my website, http://megcabot.com, so be sure to stop by!

UK, New Zealand, and Australia fans, visit http://www.megcabot.co.uk.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Fun For All!, August 2, 2005

By 

Erika Sorocco (Southern California, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ready or Not: An All-American Girl Novel (Hardcover)

Samantha "Sam" Madison, the girl who is known across the country for saving the President's life from assassination, is now 16-years-old, a Junior in high school, and ready to stop being the goody-two-shoes girl next-door. Hence, she does something drastic: she dies her hair black. But that's not all. Sam is also working at Potomac Video, where she hangs out with protest radicals all day - okay, so just one protest radical, but still, it's someone. She's now taking a life drawing class with her boyfriend - who also happens to be the President's son - David, and she's discussing the possibility of having sex with her boyfriend. However, from day one, things don't go as planned. Who knew that life drawing meant that a naked guy would stand in front of you as you draw a picture of him? And why did Sam have to open her big mouth and admit that she had said yes to sex on national television, when she hadn't actually said yes - at least not yet? Obviously, Sam's life is about to get a bit crazier.

I adored the book ALL-AMERICAN GIRL, and was first on line to purchase it when it was released a few years ago. Hence, you can imagine the joy I felt when I heard that READY OR NOT was being released. The growing up that Sam - and even her older sister, Lucy - have succumbed to is amazing. They are like two totally different people, and it's nice to see that they are finally getting along. The subject matter - as many people have commented on already - is probably more suitable for teenagers, just as PRINCESS IN TRAINING was, as both books deal with sex. A lot. Overall, this was a fabulous new look into the life of Sam Madison, that will be eaten up by readers of all ages. Great fun for all!

Erika Sorocco
Book Review Columnist for The Community Bugle Newspaper

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Various Elements, September 5, 2006

By 

Tapferermaedchen "Tapferermaedchen" (University Heights, Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ready or Not: An All-American Girl Novel (Hardcover)

While I must agree with some of the other people here who said that the main plotline of whether Sam and David were going to have sex or not was boring, there was more to the book than just that. In particular, I had a soft spot for Harold and Lucy's budding relationship, as well as the plotline of Sam's job at the video store. Also interesting to me was the 'slut' plotline, since I have personally witnessed such hypocritical behaviour at my own high school. While the end scene of everybody calling themselves sluts was a bit unbelieveable I must admit that I did give an inner scream of joy when Harold went up to join the girls.
What I did have a problem with, however, was the fact that Samantha seemed to think that if her boyfriend wanted to have sex at Camp David, then they were going to have sex at Camp David and she didn't really have a say in it. This wasn't the eventual conclusion of her thought processes, but throughout much of the novel she did seem to have resigned herself to this fact. This seemed very weak on her part.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Character Inconsistiencies, June 6, 2006

By 

lovetoread "W2" (Rio Rancho,, NM United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ready or Not: An All-American Girl Novel (Hardcover)

The thing that bothered me most of all about this book was the character inconsistiency at the end. I did not read the first book so I can't say how Sam changed from one book to the next but the whole problem Sam had through this whole book was the fact that she wasn't ready for sex and she THOUGHT her boyfriend was. Despite the fact that she asked about birth control, she still consistiently indicated that she wasn't ready. She even avoided David because she was so distressed about going away for the weekend with him. She didn't even want to go!!! To make this a really good book, Sam would have asked David what he meant about 'playing Parchisi'. She would have told him what she was feeling. They would have discussed the whole issue. THAT would have been Sam making a MATURE decision. Poor David didn't even have a clue what was going on in her mind and appeared to be shocked by the idea when she finally springs it on him. Because of this, the ending was very disappointing. It was almost like "Oh well, we're alone, I have contraceptives, we might as well do it even if I wasn't ready and you don't look like you're very ready either."
There is one other thing I didn't like about the book: the white trash reference...very biggoted