Customer Reviews

Untitled: A Bad Teen Novel

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Ariano is just so full of herself. My first whiff of this book was strangely reminiscent of Drew Barrymore's equally whiny "Little Girl Lost." The difference is that, despite still having wild child tendencies (even now at age 30), Barrymore actually demonstrated that she could learn and evolve. Ariano (aka Wing Chun) has failed on all fronts.

Having been a teenager of the 1980s, I find it impossible to sympathize. I encountered a level of brutality and ostracism that would blow her mind. (Even Revenge of the Nerds was a better example of 1980s misfit youth life.) I also find it hard to be anything other than bored or annoyed at her mindset.

"A Bad Teen Novel" is a mild way to put it. If you have a copy, burn it or shred it or get your money back. A minus five-star rating is the mildest way to go.

The concept of this book is not necessarily bad because looking back on your adolescent attempts at writing can be amusing, in a cringe-inducing way, but I don't understand what Ariano was trying to achieve by making this available to the public. It isn't funny to anyone who doesn't actually know the author and it just seems like a pointless exercise in self-aggrandisement.

Vanity publishing has that name for a reason.

If cringe-inducing teen prose is what you're in the mood for, I suggest pulling your old diaries out of storage. Tara Ariano's bad teen writing and present-day asides are no more interesting, clever or funny than yours. A pointless vanity piece that offers no insight or relevance within its understandably self-published pages.

As if the book wasn't self-indulgent enough, she put a picture of her junior-high self on the COVER. It's just not nearly as funny as the writer thinks it is.

Don't buy this when you can read much better journals and teen memoirs on the web for free.

basements, attics, closets, or memories. I gave up halfway through this thing because it is exactly what it says it is, no less, and, more significantly, absolutely no more. Believe the billing. If you want to read a bad teen novel, read your own diary, get bored after fifty pages, put it away, and spend the dinero on a tasty takeout dinner. Because there's no insight, humor, or interest here that isn't in the most banal journal of the most ordinary schoolgoer of the late 1980s. Too bad there isn't some creativity or imagination here. Then again, the movies have applied plenty of creativity and imagination to that period and generation already -- it isn't like there isn't more to say, but to do it again will take someone with a truly fresh approach and the intelligence to execute it with originality. That ain't here.

I will admit that this book is probably not for everyone. It is, however, a riotous, goosebump-inducing flashback for anyone who, as a 13-year-old girl, thought she would one day be a big-shot novelist.

Thirteen was different back then. Despite some edgy content, the whole point of the book isn't supposed to be a hard-nosed, poignant social commentary. The entire intent of the book is to laugh at the ludicrously misinformed protagonist and to commiserate with the big shoes in which the writer was trying to walk.

I think this is just one of those things one either will 'get' or won't. For those of us who get it, it's a great book to nestle on our bookshelves with a D.A.R.E. bookmark tucked inside.

For the reviewer who asked how this got published: look at the publisher. It is a self-published book. Print-on-demand, what have you. Writers Club Press will take any piece of tripe as long as you fork over some cash.

This book is so blatantly, "Look at me, I'm so hilarious and can poke fun at myself and my horrendous writing!" That doesn't make the book any less bad. The sarcastic self-awareness is just a thin veil for what really is horrible writing. It works for maybe one page. Or maybe one paragraph. I'm guessing that the ones leaving the glowing reviews are personal friends of Tara, or those on her website, Fametracker. And they're also the ones marking the less-than-stellar reviews as "Not Helpful." Very mature. Oh well. I guess that'll happen to this one, as well. We'll see.

There's a reason why most people self-publish. It's because no self-respecting traditional publisher would accept them. Sure, there are exceptions (for instance, if you want to only publish a small collection of cookbooks for your cooking group), but is this one of them? I don't think so.

As someone who has one (more than one actually) bad books written when she was a teen tucked away for her grandkids to perhaps stumble across and be amused by, I don't think there's anything wrong with keeping your early writing efforts around. The problem lies when you decide they are good enough (or bad enough) to see the light of day.

As someone who is no stranger to rejection slips that assure me that good novels are regularly turned away due to reasons other than the writer's ability, I would love to know how this book got published. The right connections? Maybe. It's not like the author is a brand name like Grisham or King, who no matter how many critics trash their books, sell merrily and well.

This book is exactly what it claims to be, but I still think the place for a nonfamous writer's juvenalia is the Web or in a trunk. You can get plenty of bad (or not so bad) teen prose just by surfing the Web, you certainly don't need to PAY to read it. Indeed many famous writers in the past have been strenuously opposed to publishing their early novels after the writers became household names. Why, oh why, couldn't this writer wait until she had something truly worthy of being published?

A friend who is a fan of Ariano's web site loaned this to me. I thought the premise was amusing, but the novelty of the idea wears off damn quickly, and I more or less skimmed most of it. I can't believe self-indulgent crap like this gets published when actual writers with actual talent have a hard time breaking in. The bottom line is: Sometimes an idea should just stay an idea; when it comes to fruition, you realize how lame it really is. Oh, well, I suppose Ariano got her cheap thrill, made 2 or 3 bucks and will now hopefully sink into obscurity. (And, sorry to be petty, but -- Man! -- Check out the mug on her!)

I wish I were this brave. I could never open my 13 year old self up to the type of ridicule that would come from people having read the angst of my 13 year old soul.

I see so many bad reviews, and it makes me wonder if the reviewers understood the premise. This isn't a book about a 13 year old girl. This is a book that was written by a 13 year old girl. WIth all of her ignorance and awkwardness laid bare to the world.

Having read pieces of this on her website before she decided to self publish this book, I kind of knew what was coming, but I had no idea it would be so wonderfully, hilariously bad.
It's like finding a picture of yourself from 1989 and wondering ho you could have possibly thought the Jennifer Grey (ala Dirty Dancing) shorts and perm were cool looking.

If I had to sum it up in 2 words- lovingly cringeworthy.