Young Adult Literature without Apology
Amy's assessment of contemporary young adult literature, organized by author and title, censored by noone.
Realistic | Romance | Science Fiction | Historical Fiction | Fantasy | Horror | Mystery
Burnham, Niki (2005). Sticky Fingers. NY: Simon Pulse. ISBN: 0689876491. 288 pages.
I picked out "Sticky Fingers", with its sexy cover, suggestive title and titillating back cover line--"Busting my a** makes me feel good" (note: these are not MY censorship asterisks! This is how the tagline was printed!)--because I thought it was going to be a "racy read" and because it was featured on a local news story about scandalous y.a. fiction. "Look out, Judy Blume," I thought as I brought the book home from the store.Admittedly, I was eager to get to the "good" parts of "Sticky Fingers" and started reading madly. By page 100, the only "sticky fingers" were those of a friend of the narrator, who had shoplifted a bottle of nail polish from the CVS. So far, in spite of the fact that the protagonist's boyfriend had been pressuring her for sex, the book delivered no action. The back cover promised, though, that things would change when the main character had her first drink. . .
SPOILER ALERT! In, like, the last chapters (we're talking pages 150-175 here), the main character finally takes two sips of a beer at a party. Soon, she starts feeling dizzy, funny and kind of drunk. Turns out, her boyfriend decided to put roofies in her drink to get her to "relax" so that they could finally have sex. Of course, a friend (the aforementioned shoplifter) saved her (and her virginity) and the book ended. There was an epilogue and an author's note, in which readers were warned of the dangers of date rape drugs.
What a rip off! I stayed up until midnight waiting for this weak delivery! These new YA books are all tease and no tickle. Can you effectively describe a book as "prudish"? Publishers, take a lesson from the teen exploitation genre: don't put the goods in the window if you don't intend to sell!
